


try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [29]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (YEAH WELL WHAT KIND OF DO YOU THINK I WAS GONNA GO FOR), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animal Play, Brienne is the Best, Cats, Collars, Cuddling & Snuggling, Endearments, F/M, Hand Feeding, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Idiots in Love, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Kink Discovery, Kink Negotiation, Light Dom/sub I SUPPOSE IT COUNTS in the context of..., Minor Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell, Non-Sexual Kink, Non-Sexual Submission, Not For Cersei Fans I Warned You, Petplay, Praise Kink, Safe Sane and Consensual, Spitefic, Stalking (on C's part obv. I forgot to put it with the negative tags above), Subspace, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, minor bronn/tyrion, past abusive relationship, starts angst ends up needing the dentist, the things I do for spite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 08:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “Listen, it’s just — this is going to sound pathetic and whatnot, but — that’s the point. I mean, do you think that the only other person I’ve been with other than you ever gave a damn? Every time I think about how things were, I just realize how it was always about her and almost never about me and yes, she actually did look halfway bored the few times it was. The fact that you don’t fucking get bored doing something that I wanted to do and that you wouldn’t have thought of if not for me is the novelty here. And I didn’t realize how much exactly you might not have gotten bored until these last few days, so — well. That’s it.” He bites down on the muffin. She shakes her head and covers his hand with hers.“I get it,” she assures him, tangling their fingers together. “Anyway, full disclosure: I probably don’t get the same things you get out of it, but I like it anyway and I do get different ones out of it, for that matter. God forbid, I actually do enjoy it because I like to see I’m an active part in making you get you deserve nice things from life, so — just know that. Also, I’m not above throwing yarn at you until you get it.”“Fuck you, Tarth,” he snorts into his coffee.





	try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm

**Author's Note:**

> ... so: we're back to THE ACTUAL PLANNED LAST THREE SPITEFICS which I'm finishing because come the fuck on I've come this far I'm finishing this even if I'm so behind it's not even funny.
> 
> Before I even go touch the A/Ns, here is our wise anon of the day that was actually sent to yours truly sometime in... 2015 or 2016. The memories are fuzzy, I just remember being legitimately fairly creeped out upon reading it back then. Anyway:
> 
> So: there was a similar one I wrote for in these series, too, but... let's just say that the sheer wtf-ery of this one asked for its own fic, I stared at it for a minute going like 'how do I unpack the wtf-ery of this damned ask', I thought *one* thing, I handed it to a few other people I consulted with to ask them if they had the same idea as I did and... drum roll, everyone had pretty much that exact same idea. As in: 'this thing calls for petplay but like hell he'd be a dog out of anything'. (That's because come the fuck on there's even felines on his house sigil, at least pick the right one. ;) ) Which anyway... I mean let's be fucking serious it's four words but imvho it's really telling that *this* is apparently an argument that should convince me jb sucks.
> 
> So, full disclosure: this is not my usual kink/the type of kink I go look for, and until I started looking things up for this fic it was like 'I know people are into it cool not my thing but godspeed'. So I figured I was going to do it properly and I went online and looked things up, I talked to people into it that probably don't want to be mentioned by names but that I'd really like to thank very, very much because otherwise I wouldn't have grasped a lot of things that turned out being fairly necessary, they actually don't do anything until 10k into this because I needed build-up both to bring it up *and* to unpack the wtf-ery of the premises of that ask, then it's basically tooth-rotting fluff with added pseudo-experimental writing in the last section. I would also like to thank poor ao3 user totemundtabu for being the sounding board while I was writing this ie 'PLEASE TELL ME IF THIS MAKES SENSE OR NOT' every other section I finished. Thanks everyone of you I honestly wouldn't have even known where to begin making sense of it otherwise. ;)
> 
> I couldn't tag jc as past/minor because it starts when he breaks up with her but it has repercussions for the entire fic and it's not *minor* since he has Issues Because Of That Relationship and it's not in the past and he's working through them during the fic itself. I hope it doesn't end up in the tag but if it does you're free to scroll by.
> 
> Also, GRRM owns everything, the title is from bob dylan who probably hadn't ever imagined this is how I'd use it, the jobs they have in this one fic are a psudo-homage to my favorite tv show when I was fourteen (yes it was _Judging Amy_ no I do not accept judgment it was amazing ;) ) and I'll saunter vaguely downwards to finish the remaining two fics. Here it goes. ;)
> 
> Last thing: if you aren't knowledgeable about general cat behavior, reading up some [basics](https://starelief.org/the-abcs-of-cat-behavior/) will make sure you don't... miss any specific choice taken in this fic. ;) (not everything in that link happens in the fic but everything that happens in the fic is in that link.)

When Tyrion’s phone rings at three in the morning, he’s _this_ tempted to not answer. Who the _fuck_ prank calls at this time, that’s what he’d like to know, but then he thinks, _what if it’s an emergency_.

He checks the number.

It’s _Jaime_ ’s cellphone.

Right. Fuck. It’s an emergency.

He takes the call.

“What,” he blurts into the receiver. “You’d better have a very good reason —”

“Can you come over?”

Tyrion’s first instinct is answering _it’s three in the fucking morning_ , then he hears how his brother’s sounding — as in, not that good and like he screamed himself hoarse.

“What happened?” He asks.

“I — I broke up with her,” Jaime answers, and _fuck_ , wait, he _really_ did — “and I need someone to come here and make sure I don’t take it back.”

Tyrion is immediately out of the bed. “I’ll be there in thirty at most,” he says without even trying to bargain. If Jaime went and did it when he’s been in that toxic clusterfuck of a relationship with his blasted _twin sister_ for years and Tyrion had been trying to make him understand for a hell of a long time (since he put two and two together) that she was only ruining his life, he’s not going to tell him to wait until the morning. He puts on the first clothes he finds and calls a cab — it _shouldn’t_ take longer than half an hour total, hopefully.

 _Hopefully_.

— —

Thanks to a generous tip to the driver, he’s at Jaime’s place in twenty. He knocks on the door and Jaime lets him in, and —

“You know you look like shit, don’t you?”

“I’m aware,” Jaime says, letting him in.

“Do I want to know the details?” He asks as Jaime closes the door.

“She and Robert are getting back together,” he says, and — wait.

“Sorry, didn’t she tell you that she filed for that divorce so that _you could be together_ or whatever the fuck was that you said last time before I told you it was too much information?”

“Yes,” Jaime groans, shaking his head. “Except that — well. Apparently being two years apart while he figured his shit out or something and running into him again at the parents/teachers meetings did _wonders_ and why wouldn’t they give it another try, never mind that I know she was with other people meanwhile, but — she said it _didn’t need to be over_.”

“… What?”

“Yeah. Uh, I told her that I couldn’t do it anymore if it had to be scraps of her time all over again, you know, and it got ugly.”

“Was she here?” Tyrion asks, noticing that there are a few broken glasses on the ground and a couple broken plates.

“Yeah,” Jaime confirms. Wait, what the —

“Did she hit you or what?”

“… How did you —”

“Jaime, there’s a _hand-shaped_ bruise on your cheek, I’m not blind.” He hadn’t noticed it because the hallway was dark and Jaime only had one lamp on in the living room, but now that they’re near it? He can see it even too well.

Jaime clears his throat. “Right. I didn’t even check. Well, I did say it got ugly. I stood my ground, though.”

“Well, _good for you_. And?”

Jaime sighs and hands him his cellphone.

“What should I do with this?”

“I need you to go through all the texts and delete them, then any private chat we might have had, and then block her. Please — if I do it I don’t know how much I’ll last before — you’ll see.”

“What’s the passcode?” Tyrion asks, figuring that seeing those two’s conversations will be a small price to pay if it means that Jaime gets to sort through his shit and stops letting Cersei ruin his life.

“Mom’s birthday,” Jaime sighs.

 _Of course it is_.

Tyrion taps the date and blanches.

“The _fuck_?” He asks as he sees the _sixty_ messages in the texts’ inbox. There are also another thirty unread WhatsApp notifications, twenty on Facebook and fifteen lost calls.

“She didn’t take it too well,” Jaime says, leaving it at that.

Tyrion takes a deep breath and starts deleting the Facebook conversation without even looking at it, thankfully it’s doable. He does the same with the WhatsApp chat, _thankfully_ those can be done away with just one tap without reading anything. He blocks her number from that one platform, then blocks her Facebook contact, then goes to block the number straight from the contacts list.

Right.

He just has sixty texts to delete manually.

He takes a deep breath and starts.

After the fifteenth, he doesn’t even ask Jaime for permission to get a drink — he heads straight for his alcohol cabinet and helps himself to a half-glass of whiskey, then he goes back on it.

— —

By the time he’s deleted that entire batch — which thankfully, being _texts_ , wasn’t as much as it could have been when they obviously preferred to speak through regular chats — he finishes his drink and looks at Jaime again. It’s four AM, he’s sitting on the sofa looking down at his hands with such a dejected face that no one could be angry at him just by _looking_ at him, and after what he just read — well. Tyrion can believe it took him years to get out of that mess.

Tyrion, for how well-read he is, kind of always was at a loss whenever it came to discuss his fucking sister with Jaime, for obvious reasons, and now — he feels like he should say _something_ , but in the face of the first row seat he just had at how it worked between them… he doesn’t know if he has the words.

But he _does_ owe it to Jaime to try at least — hell, he actually was the _one_ person in his family that not only never hated him but actually _actively_ cared, he encouraged him to say fuck it to his father’s wishes and put his share of their mother’s trust fund money into that publishing house he always dreamed of running and stopped to make him, Cersei and their father get along the moment he realized it was a lost cause. _That_ while being the only person that _everyone_ in the house sort of got along with, arguing himself with their father because he also widely disapproved of his life choices _and_ being stuck in that toxic mess of a relationship with Cersei _all his life_. Given all of that, he can… at least tell him something nice, in lack of anything more useful.

“Listen, uh, I —”

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me or anything.”

“That’s _not_ it, shit, just let me talk. You _do_ know you have a life outside her, don’t you?”

“Do I?” He snorts, sounding like he might cry. “Fine, I have avoided working for our fucking father for this long, but other than that? I spent years waiting on her, the only friends I have that I still talk to were _yours_ first except for… we know who, I didn’t let myself see any perspective outside of whether she was involved in it or not, and now I’m here feeling like I tore out half of myself and just looking at those text made me want to throw up, and where does that leave me?”

“For one, just the fact that you like _my_ friends and you spent years making sure she wouldn’t make _me_ feel like getting run over by a car before I turned fifteen should say a lot to how _unlike_ her you are. Never mind that if your only other friend is _we know who_ then can you even imagine Cersei _talking_ to her?”

Jaime shakes his head. “Fine,” he agrees, “but that’s not the point and you know it.”

 _Fuck’s sake_.

Tyrion is going to have to text both Brienne and Bronn _very_ shortly, given that he has a feeling that not only he’ll need all the support he can get, but also that if Jaime actually did put his foot down then it does have something to do with the fact that _maybe_ he figured out he’s into _Brienne_ , which Tyrion and Bronn have been suspecting for ages, and maybe he _would_ like a chance with her, and he can’t have it if Cersei is around to stop him from acting on it.

Just not now. “Jaime, for — you’re _not_ going to go back to her like, what was that she said —”

“ _A pathetic dog who should know better_ ,” he snorts.

“Yeah, _well_ , you’re not that, and for that matter if she thinks _you_ are _the stupidest person in the family_ she hasn’t looked at herself in the mirror. You’re good at what you do, you’re the only one of the rest of the family who actually is in some field that’s not… well, all about the evils of capitalism, but you’re also not relying on _your_ part of Mom’s trust fund to manage that, you worked your ass off to get there, you _like it_ and you certainly did more for _anyone_ than her.” Fuck’s sake, he and Brienne met because he got hired as the clerk to her judge in a youth court and she has a reputation for being particularly good at it, at least _they_ do something to help other people. More than Cersei can say for herself. “Just don’t, all right? All I’ve seen in those conversations is someone trying to convince you that you can’t live without her because she’s on a power trip and thinks you can’t have a life just so you can be there when she needs it.”

“I _know_ that,” Jaime sighs. “I mean, I guess I do. It’s just — she’s always been there and I _know_ it was bad for the both of us —”

“More for you,” Tyrion interrupts him.

“ _Maybe_ , but — I don’t know how it works if she’s not there.”

“Believe me,” Tyrion says, “I tried it when I moved out and I have avoided seeing her since except at holiday dinners, and my life has significantly improved for it.”

Jaime does half-laugh at that, except that he looks like he might cry, and so Tyrion figures that it’s time to say fuck it to everything and tugs on his arm so he gets off the sofa and on the ground and he can give him a hug without having to climb on the damned thing. Jaime does at once, and Tyrion pretends he’s _not_ crying in fits against his shoulder — given how many times the reverse happened when they were younger, he’s not going to mind.

Still. In the next months he’s _definitely_ going to keep an eye on him. No way he’s going to get over this clusterfuck anytime soon.

 

***

 

 

_Three months later_

 

 

“Apologies if I’m intruding,” Brienne decides to ask as she closes the door to her office, “but — are you sure you’re all right?”

Jaime, who had been closing his shoulder bag without seemingly putting any attention into the task, drops it on the chair in front of her desk and looks back at her with a half-guilty smile.

“Yes,” he says, shrugging. “It’s just — you know how it went before. I always tell myself I’m adjusted to most of the ugly stuff coming into that room, then sometimes it gets uglier. But I’ll live.”

Brienne isn’t _too_ sure of that — or better, she entirely buys the explanation because today’s case was _really damn ugly_ and she also needed a moment to compose herself after she said her piece. She had walked out of the room to find him sitting kneeling in front of the kid that was on the witness stand not half an hour before and most likely telling her something nice, because she was definitely crying when she left the room (out of relief, most likely, but _still_ , it had been ugly) and now she was laughing, but the moment the social worker came to get her the warm smile had fallen off his face and he had barely talked to her.

Thing is — he always does that if he can, as in, cheering the kids up, and he’s good at it, better than _she_ is at that certainly, but she has a feeling that this time he’s not going to bounce back too soon.

“Can you forgive me if I’m not too convinced?”

He smiles a bit at that, and even if he looks tired, it _does_ reach his eyes.

“Can’t hide anything from you now, can I?”

She moves closer to the chair. “We’ve known each other how long, two years? Since we _just_ arrived here at the same time? Come on, give me some credit.”

“All right, you win,” he admits. “I’m just glad it’s the last one until next week. It’s just, you know I’ve been doing this also out of — where I come from.”

She nods — she’s seen enough of how his family is to know that it should be in the dictionary definition of _beyond dysfunctional_ , and she’s talked to Tyrion enough to know exactly how much. She knows that he went into _this_ business because he wanted to help out people in the same situation, but he picked _this_ one specific job because he didn’t think he could handle anything that required a more strict involvement, he _did_ tell her a couple of months into their professional relationship when they had started getting friendly with each other.

“I do,” she says.

He shrugs. “Let’s just say that her sister _really_ was unpleasantly reminding me of mine and _she_ was unpleasantly reminding me of my brother, so — considering that I haven’t even talked to Cersei since, well, _you know_ , it just wasn’t the best moment for it, I guess.”

Brienne nods — she _knows_ also what went down with him and his sister, even if she’s not sure she knows all the details. What she does know was enough. And seeing how after that break up it took him two weeks to get back to… _more or less_ his usual, she can believe he didn’t need any reminder right now.

“Well, I’m sure the girl really didn’t notice.”

“And how do you know?”

“You could see it from the way you made her laugh before,” Brienne says, moving a hand to his shoulder. “You know you’re _good_ at this, right? It’s not like getting involved means you’re not. All of us do.”

He looks at her _strangely_ , the same way he always does when she happens to tell him that he actually is good at his job or anything of the kind — she’s noticed it a long time ago and she never said nothing, but from what Tyrion told her, she always supposed that people haven’t told him _that_ kind of thing too often.

Too bad, because he _is_ good at his damn trade.

Damn, she _really_ wishes he’d crack a bad taste joke. He’s never quite in shortage of them, _usually_.

“Thanks,” he says, obviously sounding uncomfortable but not wanting to give it out. “But really, I’ll be fine. It’s just, I didn’t need a reminder, I guess.”

“Yeah, and how are you doing on _that_ front? I’m not asking because I figured you don’t want to discuss it, but you can… talk about it if you want to.”

He shrugs. “I’m not quite sure of how to put it, even if I guess I _should_ talk about it to someone. It’s just, she kind of gave up on the whole… trying to send texts from different numbers thing after I changed mine, but now I’m finding blank letters in the mailbox once per week and… I’m not even reading them, I give them to Tyrion and tell him to check before throwing them away, but it’s always the same drivel apparently.”

“Jesus,” Brienne shakes her head. “I imagine pressing charges wouldn’t work?”

“And what do I tell the police, that my twin sister who just sent me an RSVP for her second wedding to the same guy when she cheated on him with _me_ that long and who has pretty much been telling me that we’re soulmates and meant to be since I can remember is trying to convince me that I shouldn’t have cut things off? I don’t think I need to tell you it’s not exactly legal.”

Fair enough, she should have considered it — it’s just, she hates seeing him taking it this badly, especially when he _did_ tell her that he cut things off also because he couldn’t handle always putting her first anymore, and she hates that she’s not letting him do that in peace. Still, maybe at least she can try to say _something_ , even if she never was that great when it came to talking about feelings to other people.

“Right,” she says. “But you _do_ know you deserve a lot better than that, don’t you? I’ve known you long enough to know. And — well. You’re _not_ alright, but since you cut it off with her you do look better.”

“Good to know,” he says, sounding half-relieved. “Still, it was just — bad timing.”

He glances down at his bag, looking fairly displeased at the idea of grabbing it.

“Let me guess,” she says, “you’re absolutely not looking forward to being on your own tonight but you’re not asking?”

He lets out a half-laugh. “And if it was the case?”

She squeezes his arm. “Well, my neighbor is renovating so my place is a mess right now and you can hear noise at seven in the morning, but if you’re amenable to let me have your sofa I _can_ come at yours.”

“Sure,” he says, not even stopping to think about it. “My sofa is always free for _you_ , Tarth.” He winks as he says it, finally putting on his coat and then throwing the bag over his shoulder. She quickly does the same and locks the door before following him out into the empty hallway.

Except that then she turns and catches him looking at her with a wistful expression, maybe, definitely more intense than usual or so it seems — half of this place jokes about the two of them trading intense stares, but she never paid it much attention. She’s gone through too many people asking her out as a joke to fall for that kind of talk. Still, right now… well. _That_ was one intense stare.

“What’s wrong?” She asks.

“Why should _anything_ be wrong?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Because you look like you want to tell me something and you’re _not_. You know you can, right?”

“I don’t know if I can tell you _this_ ,” he admits.

“Jaime, you told me you were in an on and off relationship with your _twin sister_ , six months after we started working together, and it seems to me like I haven’t asked for a transfer, what could possibly be worse?”

He snorts, looking back down at his hands, then up at her again. “It’s just,” he says, “fuck, figures I’d be terrible at saying it, but — listen, I did try to break it off other times. I always ended up going back because it seemed like there was no other option or like if she wasn’t in my life then it didn’t feel right. _This_ one time, though — never mind that I couldn’t do it on the side _again_ , but… maybe I had feelings for someone else, too.”

She nods. That makes sense. As much as she might feel somewhat sad at hearing it because that means he’s interested in someone who’s most surely not _her_ , it’s not like he knows she’s realized a year ago that her feelings when it comes to him aren’t exactly _friendly_. Nor did she let him know, there was no reason to ruin things when they’re good friends and there is no way _he_ is into her romantically. And as much as it pains her to know, she _will_ help him out with it because she wants him to be happy, regardless of whether it’s with her or not.

“All right. So what, you wanted advice? Because I’m really not the right person to —”

“Well,” he interrupts her, “how would you advise me to actually fess up to this person, if it was up to you?”

“… How would _that_ be helpful?”

“Tarth, I think we discussed our sad high school experiences enough that I’m fairly sure you can advise anyone on how to _not_ do it, at least.”

Fine. She’ll answer seriously — he wouldn’t ask her to make fun of her, she knows, and it’s a… fair point, she figures.

“ _Well_. Ask them out for coffee maybe, and make sure they get that you’re serious, but leave them an out in case they want to say no? Even if you shouldn’t have that problem.”

At _that_ , he suddenly smirks wider, not as tiredly. “ _I_ shouldn’t have that problem?”

She knows she’s going red in the face. “I mean,” she stammers, “who’d even refuse _you_?”

He snorts. “Brienne, I’m fairly sure that given everything I’m not _that_ great a prospect, but nonetheless, good to know. Fancy going for coffee tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t know why we’d need to when I’m sleeping at your place.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Brienne, I was following your advice,” he says, his tone suddenly warmer.

At _that_ , she freezes. “Wait a moment. You’re asking _me_ out for coffee?”

“ _You_ said it might work, I should hope your advice is valid for yourself, too. But yes, I was asking _you_ out for coffee. I’m not going to point out that you _should_ know that I don’t even see many other women on a regular basis.” He smiles, slightly, but he looks _nervous_ now. “So,” he goes on, “are we getting it or not? Because if not just pretend I haven’t said —”

There’s a limit, Brienne decides, to how long you can pine stupidly after someone who has just asked you out and who is _definitely_ not making fun of you, so she takes his face in between her hands and shuts him up pressing a kiss to his mouth, that most likely was a very poor attempt, but the moment she leans back he’s looking at her as if she just gave him ten Christmas presents at once, so maybe it wasn’t _that_ bad.

“Jaime, let’s just say I’ve been wanting to do that for a year and let’s leave it at that, how about it?”

“You know what, I’m game,” he says, and when he kisses her again he’s smiling for _real_ , not the half-there grin from before, and as he moans into his mouth the moment her hand grasps at his hair, she’s entirely looking forward to see where they’re going from here.

 

 

_Three months later_

 

 

“Damn,” Jaime fake-complains as she puts on her coat, “you sure you can’t stay the night?”

“I wish,” she sighs, “but you know I have to revise the papers for tomorrow’s hearing and I have them at home. But I can stay the entire weekend after we’re through with it.”

“Fine,” he agrees as she leans down to kiss him before she has to leave. Her hand goes to the back of his head, scratching under his hair, and he moans into her mouth at once, standing up along with her.

“Hm,” he mock-complains, “you sure you can’t do that again before you leave?”

“What,” she smiles, ruffling his hair a bit, expecting it when he arches up into the touch, “ _that_?”

“Hey, it feels nice,” he protests, and she hadn’t thought she’d ever manage to make _him_ blush at any point in their relationship, it’s usually the contrary.

Well then.

“I’m not protesting now, am I?” She grins, doing it another couple of times before she lets her hand fall down and before he starts thinking that she _minds_ it when it was just teasing in good fun. “I need to go but fine, I solemnly swear I’m making up for that from tomorrow evening, how about that?”

“I’m holding you up to that,” he grins back at her, even if it’s obvious he _is_ a bit disappointed that she can’t stay past nine PM. But he’s not going to stop her since it’s _his_ job, too, and so she puts on her scarf and waves at him before getting out of the door.

It’s a short drive to her place, thankfully they don’t live _too far_ apart, and she can’t help smiling to herself a bit if she thinks about all the things she’d have never bet a cent on when it came to be in a relationship with _him_.

Surely she had no idea he’d be the one out of the two of them preferring to stay in rather than going out, or that he’d legitimately be fine with spending a full-on hour with his head on her leg while she ran her hand through his hair, but — it’s not like it’s a _problem_. Hell, she’s sure she stopped feeling weird about him touching _her_ hair two weeks after they kissed and she knows she has _issues_ , it’s actually a relief to see that he has no problems whatsoever with _her_ ministrations in that sense. Also she doesn’t want to presume anything, but since they got together he seems to look happier, the bags under his eyes have receded and he doesn’t look so tired anymore, and maybe it’d be a bit too much to assume _she_ has some merit for it, but — it’s still a nice feeling, all right? Especially when she had pretty much given up on ever getting anything beyond the occasional hook-up if she was lucky enough to find one and figured she’d just settle on getting a cat and be done with it if she ended up feeling too lonely in her two-rooms apartment.

She’s still in an incredibly good mood as she parks and goes upstairs, and thankfully tomorrow’s hearing should be fairly straightforward and shouldn’t cause too much of an emotional upheaval for anyone involved — she only has to finalize an adoption that _everyone_ involved wanted, nothing that might cause unforeseen complications. She makes sure all her notes are in order, brushes her teeth and goes to bed with a sigh — she wishes she could have stayed at Jaime’s… but they have the entire week-end to make up for it, right? She grabs her phone, unable to keep herself from smiling like a teenager when she notices that he’s texted her _looking forward to tomorrow afternoon!_ before most likely going to bed himself. She replies _not as much as I am_ , not worrying about how corny it actually sounds, and then puts the phone on charge and closes the light.

She’s woken up at once by the phone’s ringing — _what the hell_ , she thinks, looking at her alarm. It’s two in the morning, who’d be even calling? She takes the phone, her eyes going wide as she sees Jaime’s name flashing on the screen. She immediately takes it, figuring it has to be urgent.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, figuring it’s not a social call at this time in the night. For a moment she hears no answer whatsoever, but then —

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” he says, suddenly sounding like he’s _not_ okay at all, “but — do you think you could come over? I — I don’t know if I can say it on the phone.”

Brienne should tell him to wait until morning, they _both_ have to go to work and it’s _late_ , but — fuck’s sake, he sounds like shit, all things considered he barely asks for anything when it gets down to it and it’s a ten-minute drive, she’ll survive.

“Let me change,” she says, and the way he thanks her just makes her feel _even more worried_. She changes into a pair of jeans and a sweater, pulls on her boots, grabs her coat and car keys and drives back to his place.

She knocks on the door and when he opens it — _well, fuck_.

The ground is littered in pieces of this one lamp he had in his bedroom that, now that she recalls, he never turned on and was not on the nightstand, his hands are shaking wildly and he looks like he just wants to throw up.

She closes the door.

“What happened?” She asks, not sure if she should do _something_ like touch his arm if he doesn’t want her to.

“That lamp, uh. Shit. I forgot it was even there, but — right. It was a thing my sister showed up with for _our_ birthday just after she divorced Robert the first time. It’s — you attach it to the internet and it comes with a twin, if you light it up and touch it… the other one in the pair lights up at the same time as long as they’re both online, so you know the other person is _thinking of you_. She hadn’t really used it that much, at most it was me doing it, and then I stopped but I kind of forgot it was there after moving it from the nightstand.”

“That’s… who’d come up with something creepy like that?”

“Sounded romantic, at the time,” he wheezes. “Anyway, I woke up before because I got a call from an unknown number, I didn’t take it and then it — turned itself on.”

“Wait, so you think she —”

“Sure she did,” he says, “just when I figured she might… let it die, you know. But of course she’s not, and — shit, I just — I lost it.”

 _With good reason_. “And how are you feeling _now_?”

He shrugs, not quite looking at her. “Like the mere idea of her never letting it go makes me want to throw up and like she just walked in here somehow, which is _idiotic_ , but —”

“You know what,” she says, “we don’t have to be in until ten tomorrow — I mean, we’d be there earlier usually because it’s the standard time to go int, but nothing happens if we’re there just in time for the hearing for once. I’m cleaning that up so it can go in the trash on the way down, you’re packing a bag for the weekend and you’re spending it at my place starting as soon as I finish with the lamp, sounds good?”

“Yes,” he immediately agrees before sending her a grateful look and bolting for the bedroom.

Brienne finds a trash bag, stuffs the lamp pieces inside it making sure she gets all of them and closes it just as he gets out of the room with the usual shoulder-bag and a small trolley.

He follows her out without saying a word, but he looks immediately more relaxed as they leave the apartment. She throws away the lamp and he sighs in relief before he gets on her car and she drives back home. When they’re at her place, he lets both bags fall to the ground and stands in front of the door, his hands slightly trembling again — she takes off her coat and helps him out of his, then takes his arm until they’re in the bedroom. The bed is still half-unmade since she left in a hurry, and his hands are still shaking as he gets rid of his clothes and she does the same. She sits on the bed, raising one arm.

“So?” She asks, and he immediately breathes in relief before he joins her under the covers, and sags against her when she runs her fingers through his hair again, and again, and if he’s making a small noise in the back of his throat, _well_ , she barely even pays attention. She knows he likes it, and he’s not moving whatsoever, so she does that until he falls asleep out of exhaustion some twenty minutes later and she keeps on doing that after while she texts Tyrion with her free hand and asks him if _anything_ happened concerning their sister and if he knows… she could handle knowing, too.

If Jaime about nuzzles her neck and keeps on making that low sound in the back of his throat as he falls asleep, well, it’s obvious that he’s liking it, so — she doesn’t pay too much attention to it.

— —

The morning after, he puts himself together remarkably well enough, and at work no one would say he’s had that shit night, which makes her think, _how many other times did the same thing happen_?

She doesn’t ask him.

They end up spending most of the weekend not even getting out of bed or the sofa, and so maybe she indulges it when he drops his head in her lap with a sort of embarrassed look to his face, but if he likes it, _why not_? Still, at that point she does notice that other than pretty much arching up into her palm whenever it touches his head, he _does_ sort of make that noise, again. And the same when she lies down with him on the aforementioned sofa (that she _really_ needs to change because it could be way more comfortable) and runs her hand all over his back.

Right. It’s maybe a bit strange, but… it’s not like she minds.

So he likes it. So he’s making it clear. She doesn’t know what doesn’t quite compute about it, but — it’s not a _problem_.

She does sort of try to ask about it after, throwing a _so you really like it_ while they’re having breakfast, but then from the way he looks at her as if she caught him doing something illegal, she immediately decides to take it back and assure him that she really doesn’t care and it was just curiosity.

He looks relieved, after.

She doesn’t bring it up again and leaves it there.

Except that it keeps on nagging at her, somewhat.

— —

A month later, she’s at Renly and Loras’s for lunch — the supposed reason was that they just adopted a cat from Loras’s sister who couldn’t keep her anymore, but they also haven’t managed to hang out properly in a while because of work and the likes, so it’s really just an excuse, and it has been weird not seeing them for so long when they all lived together in uni and she was adjusted to have them around all the time.

The cat is indeed adorable — she’s of a lovely grey color with green eyes that remind her of Jaime’s a bit, and she apparently _really_ took to Renly, much to Loras’s chagrin.

After lunch, they move to the living room… and then the cat jumps into Brienne’s lap.

“How cute,” Renly says, “she likes everyone but _you_ , Loras.”

“Hilarious,” Loras retorts, “good thing _you_ like me enough for the both of us, huh?”

Brienne, who for once isn’t maybe a bit jealous of the two of them being horrible saps to each other because she finally does have someone with whom she can be a sap in return, laughs and runs a hand over the cat’s back.

The cat purrs at once, arching into her touch, and she’s suddenly hit by a deja vu so strong it almost stops her. She moves her hand upwards, caressing the cat’s head the way she usually does with Jaime’s hair —

The cat purrs louder.

Suddenly, she realizes _why_ those sounds he was making were familiar, somehow, but she couldn’t really place them because she just — hadn’t thought she’d heart _that specific kind of sounds_ in the context of… petting her boyfriend’s hair.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Shit.

Her hand stops at once and then she looks up into the eyes of _both_ her friends, who do seem fairly puzzled at her behavior.

“Everything all right?” Renly asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

“Uh, no,” she says at once, “I — I just — I think I figured a thing out and — I don’t know how to process it, probably.”

“How, petting the cat?” Renly goes on, not sounding too convinced.

“You _really_ don’t want to know,” Brienne immediately says.

“Come on,” Loras presses, “how bad can it be? And what kind of friends would we be if we didn’t help you out with it?”

“… Who says I need _help_?” She asks.

“You look in dire need of it,” Loras shrugs. Brienne pets the cat again.

… Well, fine, she kind of does. Not that it’s a _problem_ , but.

“Okay, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you twice. So, uhm. While I was, like, petting her before. I just realized that — fuck, this is embarrassing — uhm, that Jaime kind of… does the same things? More or less.”

The both of them send her a twin disbelieving stare that she’s have found hilarious if _she_ wasn’t directly involved. Then Renly raises a hand.

“Okay, that was _too much information_ —”

“Renly,” she interrupts him, “not to be _that_ person, but you do remember that I lived with you two through _all_ of university and I signed half of the Tenga packages you ordered in? And that I heard the two of you —”

“She has a point,” Loras cuts her off. “I mean, she _has_ heard us for years, let her have it. But like, you mean — like _the cat_?”

“Well, _yes_? I mean, it’s nothing overt, but —” She runs a hand over the cat’s back and she purrs again as she arches into her touch. “Like _that_ ,” she shrugs.

Loras turns towards Renly. They stare at each other.

“Should we tell her?” He asks.

“ _You_ tell her,” Renly says at once. “Fine, she was my friend first, but I can’t think about _Jaime Lannister_ and _that_ without — you do it.”

“Guys, _what_ are you on to?”

Renly says he’ll go to make some tea. Loras takes a deep breath. “Er,” he says, “well, some people actually do that on purpose.”

“… You mean, pretending they’re —”

“Yes. I mean, you _really_ didn’t notice the people next to us that time you came with to that Pride the second year of uni?”

Brienne, who had just taken barely notice of the bondage gear, hadn’t paid much attention to _the specific_ gear it was, but now that she thinks about it… Oh. _Oh_.

She thinks she’s just gotten so red in the face she could combust.

“But — he hasn’t said anything specific on the topic?” Loras asks.

“Honestly, I don’t know if he even does it on purpose or not. No, he hasn’t. But like, he barely asks for anything when it comes to, uh, well. Being intimate. I mean he makes it about me more than him, so — no.”

Loras stares at her. Then —

“I think I need to show you a few websites,” he says.

Brienne holds the cat carefully and follows him to where they keep their computer.

Well.

If _some people like that_ , she’s more than willing to learn why.

— —

Ten minutes later, she thinks she gets why Loras just went for sending her online so she could see for herself. “I — I see,” she says, mentally noting the names of the websites and every other thing he’s showing her, because she has a feeling she’ll need to read more in-depth about it later.

“Are you weirded out?” Loras asks, sounding fairly neutral.

“Uh, not exactly? I mean, it’s… out of left field for me, I guess, nothing I’d have thought of myself or that I even knew existed, but — I guess I’ll read up on it before I bring it up.”

“Well, good to you that you’re open-minded,” he winks, and Renly tells them to go get their tea already.

They do.

Brienne spends the entire ride back on her phone looking at one of the forums Loras found and decides that she has to take a moment to think about it when she’s home.

— —

Thing is, she decides after mulling over it for the entire evening, looking at _more_ websites and reading more forums… she has a feeling she gets _why_ Jaime of all people might be interested, if he’s doing it on purpose. Or do it without realizing it — some people on the forums _did_ say they hadn’t realized what they were going for in the beginning. Thing is… it might also be that _she_ is seeing things and that he hadn’t meant any of that specifically, and honestly, can she really walk up to him and ask him if that’s what he’d be interested in doing once in a while if she’s wrong?

Then again, he was defensive when she brought up that he liked her petting his hair that much, wasn’t he? Why would he be defensive if he didn’t think she’d have a problem with it?

Shit. Maybe she should… ask someone else who might know, but she’s not going to ask _his brother_ , he’d never let her hear the end of it and he probably doesn’t deserve to be put through a conversation on what _Jaime_ likes to do in bed, never mind that it seems like too much to discuss with _him_.

No, Tyrion is not a good idea.

But —

Huh.

Maybe there _is_ someone.

— —

“Is there a reason why you just said you’ll _pay_ me to never tell anyone what we’re about to discuss?” Bronn asks her, and she wishes _he_ wasn’t her only choice, but… he’s known Jaime since forever because he was Tyrion’s friend first, and he’s known him from before _she_ did and through university, half of high school and most of his thing with Cersei, so he really is the only one she can ask.

“That it’s about… listen, I’m thinking that Jaime could, uh, be into a few things that he might not be telling me, but it’s the kind of that would _really_ be embarrassing to bring up if I was wrong, so… I can’t go ask his brother.”

“Shit, right, _I_ am the only other option. Fuck me and the day I got involved with those two. Well, I might not be the best person around but I don’t _hate_ either of them, you don’t need to pay me to discuss potentially embarrassing shit when it comes to that fucking family. I have enough blackmail material for _years_ anyway.”

Right. _Right_. She takes a deep breath. “Uh, has he ever… mentioned… being interested in, er, _specific_ kinds of roleplaying? Not necessarily sexual things, but —”

Bronn raises an eyebrow. “Wait a moment. Let me guess. You’re talking about those times when he _might_ end up all over you acting like the only touch-starved cat I ever ran into in my entire life back in foster care, especially if he’s not entirely sober?”

 _What the_ —

“What if I am?” She asks, cautiously. “Also, how did you guess?”

He snorts. “Because he kept on utterly denying it, except that especially after he had a few beers in him he _would_ damn purr if you even just put a hand on his shoulder, never mind actually giving him a back rub or something. Everything strictly non-romantic and non-sexual, for that bloody matter. And given how red your face is right now, what else could it possibly be? Not like he ever was a prude, but sure as hell he never got off to hardcore porn.”

“… Do I want to know how you know that?”

“Why, don’t you think I _never_ watched porn with these two?”

Good — okay. Fine. _Fine_. She’s not going to prod on _that_ road. “So, never mind _that_ , you think that if I, uh, breached the subject, he wouldn’t… assume I’m seeing things?”

“I suppose that if you inform him you aren’t freaked out first he wouldn’t. That said, there _have_ been jokes about it back in the day which he took quite defensively, so you might want to find some excuse or make him get that he should approach you first. I’m not so bloody sure he was taking it _so_ seriously, but hey, it was pretty fucking obvious to anyone with eyes.”

“Thank you,” she says, and then, since they’re at _his_ bar and no one else is in… she can afford it. “Also, a glass of bourbon.”

“Good choice,” he winks, and she _knows_ there’s no way Tyrion won’t know of this conversation… but at least _she_ didn’t have it with him, so that’s all good.

Now if only she figures out _how_ to breach it or whether it’s worth it in the first place, that’d be grand.

— —

 _Find some excuse or make him get that he should approach you first_ might have sounded easy to _Bronn_ , Brienne decides, but it’s nowhere close to easy to _her_. She’s checked a few websites and forums, admittedly, but other than having more or less grasped _why_ some people are into it and, after thinking long and hard about it, decided that it _might_ have sounded weird in the beginning but she’d be amenable to partake in it sometimes if _he_ wanted to, she hasn’t exactly… grasped _how_ she should do that.

Thing is — it _never_ happens after they have sex. Only when they’re lying in bed or on the sofa or in moments when sex is _not_ in the equation, which from what she’s gathered means that he wouldn’t be interested in it as a, well, _sexual_ thing, so asking him if there’s anything he’d like to try out in the bedroom or anything of the kind to _breach the subject_ wouldn’t work because he most likely wouldn’t ask for that.

For that matter, he _barely_ asks for anything regardless and she already had to prod for two weeks after they got together to get him to admit that he’d have liked it if she tied him down to the bed once in a while, and he looked like he was expecting her to say no all along while he _did_ ask.

She has a feeling that if after months together he’s _somewhat_ gotten the gist that he can ask for things _in bed_ that aren’t even outlandish, he’s never going to come up to her and tell her that hey, maybe he’s into _that_ specific kind of power play exchange and maybe they should try it out. _He_ won’t. And _she_ is crap at leaving hints — the most she could manage was that once Renly and Loras invited both of them over for dinner and she purposefully spent all the time cuddling their cat and making sure that he was watching her do it, and admittedly sometimes he was sending them _strange_ looks, and then she’d meet Loras’ and Renly’s eyes and they’d both look about to erupt in giggle fits.

Yeah, _that_ hadn’t gone over well.

Sometimes she thinks, _I should just approach him and ask directly because it’s never going to solve itself differently_ , except that part of her thinks that she might be wrong… but _Bronn_ did confirm it and she doubts he’d play a practical joke on her especially because Tyrion would have his head for it, and every single other time since then when she’s paid attention to his reactions… he _definitely_ was not making random pleased noise, that was pretty much purring whether it was involuntary or not, and he moved _sort of pretty much_ like your standard cat does when it’s appreciating your ministrations.

Also, there’s the fact that while he _did_ enjoy it before his sister lit that creepy-ass lamp, _after_ then… it’s not that it happened more often. It’s just, she never thought she’d apply _intense_ to the concept of _cuddling with your boyfriend_ , except that it somehow _did_ become more… well. Intense. A few times, she’s pretty sure he zoned out for a good half hour, though she supposes in the good way, since he did seem _way_ more relaxed and rested after. The fact that both those times were just after one of those cases where either one parent or one sibling reminded him very strongly of either his father or his sister didn’t really escape her.

 _Also_ , every time Cersei tries to call or does _anything_ to remind him she exists, it happens more often, then it decreases after a week or so — or at least he gets less _intense_ about it —, then she’ll do something again and rinse and repeat.

Brienne might not be experienced in having relationships, but she’s taken enough psychology classes to do _her_ damned job and she can recognize a pattern where she sees one. Now if she was good at the relationship part of it, or if Jaime wasn’t _worse_ at it than she is because at least she started from nothing, he was starting from co-dependent toxic incestuous relationship that if you ask her also had some twenty different shades of abusive thrown into it, _maybe_ she could do something about it.

Fuck, they _do_ make a pair, don’t they.

— —

She mulls over it for another month or so. Shit, she’s known for this long and she hasn’t managed to bring it up, how hard can it be?

Then two things happen.

This particular Friday, there’s no hearing and he’s done with his share of the work a couple hours before he’s off the clock, but there’s nothing else to do and what else of her paperwork she has to go through is nothing anyone can help her with, and they’re not on call today, so she tells him to just go back home and she’ll join him when she’s done.

He grins, says he can’t wait, sends her a fairly suggestive grin that leaves nothing to imagination, packs up his bag, and leaves. She finishes her paperwork, and then turns her computer off an hour and a half later. She stands up, figuring she’ll text him, and then she notices that he left _his_ own computer turned on.

She shrugs, figuring she’ll turn it off and be done with it — she moves the mouse to get it out of standby, and _then_ she notices that there’s an open window… _in incognito mode_.

The _hell_ —

And he forgot it open _right there_ , so it’s not like she couldn’t have seen it otherwise.

She falls on the chair.

 _Well_ , she thinks as she stares at the BDSM wikipedia, _at least I have the opening_. She’s fairly sure that there’s no other reason he would be checking out the _kitty play_ page specifically if he wasn’t… well… thinking about it.

Right.

She takes a deep breath, closing it — she _has_ read that page enough times to feel slightly hysterical every time she walks in front of a sushi place, these days. Then she turns the computer off.

That’s — that’s good, though. At least now she can just go up to him, tell him she’s read it and she _knows_ and that if he wants to she’s available. There. Can’t be too hard. And _he_ left it there for everyone to see, so he can’t presume that she went looking for it herself, since if it hadn’t been her shutting that computer down it’d have been a janitor’s, and maybe he’d have rather had _her_ do it.

She forgets about texting him and heads for her car.

She finds a spot under his place, which is good.

What stops her in her tracks is that there’s a _very_ fancy Mercedes parked nearby. One she’s never seen around.

The fact that it’s red on the outside and a few golden parts outside while the inside is all beige leather isn’t boding too well. But — she doubts Tywin Lannister would drive around on his own, never mind that while Tywin Lannister is who he is, she doubts he’d go around in a car _this_ obvious.

… Oh, _shit_.

She takes out his keys from her pocket, very glad that they both had each others’s keys for emergencies _long_ before they got together, and runs up the stairs when she sees that the elevator is broken.

Which is why she hears screaming from the floor below.

Well, _shit_ , all over again.

“ — I told you,” she hears Jaime shouting as she gets close enough to distinguish what they’re actually saying, “we’re _done_ , I have a life, can’t you just fucking leave already?”

She was holding the keys in her hands, but he sounds so embittered and distressed at once, for a moment her fingers shake and they fall on the stairs, so she loses time grabbing them again. _Shit_ —

“Oh, sure, with that ridiculous girlfriend of yours? Just you wait until you come back as you _always_ do,” a female voice shouts back, even if _he_ sounds distressed and she doesn’t.

Suddenly his voice drops as she gets close to the door, even if it’s loud enough to hear it.

“I’m _not_ your fucking dog, Cersei. I’m _not_ coming back.”

For — she thought she _had_ heard the depths of his self loathing.

She’s taking it back. She hadn’t, not until now.

“Aren’t you?” She spits back, sounding like she’s amused or _something_ , and suddenly her skin is crawling and she thinks she has understood a fucking good lot of things, and —

She’s not listening to this any longer. She sticks the key into the hole, turns it, opens the door —

“Because I haven’t seen evidence to the —” Cersei starts, and then stops the moment Brienne walks through it, slamming it behind her.

“You were saying?” Brienne doesn’t even try to hide how pissed off she is here, and the fact that Jaime is sending her a grateful look while there’s some more broken glass all over the floor and he’s holding a hand to his cheek isn’t really making her feel any less pissed off.

“Well,” Cersei says, looking her over, “you’re even uglier than I had pictured —”

Brienne resists the instinct to roll her eyes to the sky — as if _that_ will offend her. Instead, she ignores her and looks at Jaime instead.

“Do you want her to be here?” She asks him.

“No,” he replies at once, sounding relieved.

“Right. Then get out,” Brienne says, turning towards her again.

“… Excuse me?”

“ _Get out_ ,” Brienne repeats. “It’s his place, he said his piece, I have the keys and you don’t. Get out or I’m going to make you. Now. I’m nowhere near interested in trading insults with you, for that matter.”

“Look at it,” she says, but she _does_ go back to the door, thankfully. “Seems like you always need someone to lead you around, huh? Pathetic,” she finishes, and then leaves before Brienne can tell her to choke on her pearls necklace, which she was sorely tempted to do.

Instead, the moment she’s out she locks the door, then immediately turns towards Jaime, who has just let his hand drop from his face.

Of course there’s a hand-shaped bruise on it.

Same as Tyrion said there was they day he broke it off.

He drops to his knees a moment later and she follows, slowly reaching out for his face, but waits until he gives her a nod to touch it — shit, it’s _burning_ , but he leans into it at once, almost rubbing against her palm, and she shakes her head before deciding she shouldn’t be asking questions right _now_ except maybe the basics.

She leans against the wall, dragging him with and drawing him close — he clings to her at once as she tries to keep her grip firm but not too constricting.

“Hey,” she says, “I think the last thing you need is me asking you _questions_ , so — just two things.”

He nods against her shoulder, but he doesn’t say anything.

“The first isn’t even a question, but — I haven’t heard the rest, but of what I heard, well, she’s wrong. And that was it. The other is, do you want to go to my place and get out of here?”

“Please, I _really_ fucking need to,” he groans, not addressing the first part of the statement.

“All right,” she says, wondering it he has enough clothes over at her place to forgo packing a bag, then decides that at most he can wear her things on top of those. “Come on, we can clean this mess up next week.”

He nods, standing up along with her — she locks the door while he puts on his jacket and follows her silently to her car. Cersei’s is not around or so it seems, so she ushers him into the passenger seat and drives off a moment later after giving his hand a squeeze.

It _should_ be ten minutes.

Of course, they end up in a traffic jam some five minutes later, and it’s the kind that looks like it’s going to stay.

Damn it. She sighs and looks at him — he’s staring out of the window and his hands are shaking on his thighs — she reaches out and grabs the right one.

“I meant it, you know.”

“What?”

“That she was wrong. That’s not what you are the way she means it, and I’ve _never_ known someone who was less of… what she implied than you. Really.”

He shrugs minutely. “Nice to see _someone_ thinks that,” he says, not sounding too convinced. “Anyway, I’m sorry you had to have a taste of it.”

She swallows. “I suppose she’s… always like _that_?”

“Any time she doesn’t like my life choices, definitely. But — well. I guess I didn’t realize how much exactly until I figured out that I didn’t really want what _she_ wanted.”

He doesn’t sound like he particularly wants to discuss it, but the moment he says it… shit.

Brienne remembers _very_ clearly what she read on some of those forums. Especially when concerning how the people in question did it because it felt easier to _ask_ for things while in headspace than outside it.

“That’d make you exactly the _contrary_ of a pathetic dog though now, wouldn’t it?” She squeezes his hand as she says it. He squeezes it back.

“I don’t know,” he blurts, “it’s just that I think these last months have been the longest time I’ve ever been without her and every damned time she does anything like _that_ — well. Now I can’t even breathe in my own damn house because she apparently paid off the porter to have his copy of the keys.”

 _And I still can’t press charges_ , he doesn’t say.

The car in front of her moves a bit. She takes her hand away to drive forward, but then they’re stuck again. Shit.

“I’m —” He starts, then he shakes his head. “I’m a mess, aren’t I.”

“Jaime, I didn’t understand you were asking me out until you _specified_ it and I had just suggested you how to do it thirty seconds before, do you _really_ think it will be me judging you on — whatever?”

She looks at him. He immediately looks to the side.

 _Huh_.

“Doesn’t change the fact that I am.”

“I think I was well aware of it. Same as _you_ were well aware of _my_ issues now.”

“That’s sweet, but you have no idea —”

“Jaime, I think I might,” she says, and then wants to curse herself, because _this_ is not the right moment to bring up that she _knows_ , for —

He turns his head at her, his mouth half-parted, looking like he’s about to bolt out of the damned car.

Well, fuck.

“What — what do you mean?” He asks, sounding like he’s this close to lose his shit.

If she had a doubt about all the reasons why he’d be interested in some nonsexual kink where he gets to call the shots _but_ at the same time he’d be beyond ashamed of asking for it, never mind the reasons why he doesn’t ask for things in the first place, she thinks they’re long gone now. Same as any doubt she might have had that she’d be willing to go there if he wants it.

“Right, listen, whatever it is you’re assuming right now, _don’t_. It’s fine. I just — I actually wanted to tell you before walking in on, well, her, but — you left your computer on before you left.”

She can see the moment the blood drains from his face.

“And you didn’t close that incognito page,” she smiles slightly, hoping she’s projecting that she’s not mad or anything like that.

“… Shit,” he says, and now he looks like he _won’t_ manage to handle it.

“Jaime,” she says, “it was nothing I hadn’t guessed already.”

 _Then_ , he actually seems to regain a bit of color, but now he’s outright looking at her like he can’t figure her out.

“… Wait, you _had_?”

She shrugs. “I might. I mean, you, uh, left hints. I put it together. But I wasn’t sure you’d agree to breaching that one subject directly, I couldn’t find a better way to talk about it and so I said nothing, and _wait a moment_ , actually it was a good thing you forgot to close that page, because I was looking for some way to tell you that I actually… wouldn’t mind it.”

Brienne doesn’t think he’s ever seen him looking so floored with surprise in his entire life. “You _wouldn’t mind it_.”

She’s pretty sure _she_ is blushing crimson now. “Listen, I — looked up into it. I mean, when I realized the first time I didn’t know what to think, then I went on the internet and figured it out, sort of, I mean, from the outsider point of view, and I figured I could see why you, uh, would be into it. I guess. I was going to tell you _that_ , then I walked in on… well, whatever the fuck it was your sister was doing, and honestly? That… did put some things in perspective. But anyway, I can see you don’t want to particularly _talk_ about it and I don’t know how to not make this conversation any less ideal than it is because in my head we would have had it while sitting down, at either of our places, after having had a nice time and not like _this_. So, making it very short: if it’s a thing you want, I’m all right with it. I mean, full disclosure that I have no idea of what I’d even be doing and we’re going to have to _talk_ about it in detail at some point, but —”

“You’d be _all right with it_?” He stops her, and most likely does her a mercy because she was well beyond ranting or putting this short. He also sounds like he can’t buy it whatsoever.

“I just told you I was,” she says. “I suppose it’s not… a sexual thing? Or is it? For you, I mean.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “Not the way I had considered it.” He’s also looking at her like he might faint at any moment. “But… really? I mean, I was never going to ask, not really, you’re already doing too much —”

And _here_ he goes again, she thinks. The traffic clears a bit.

She starts the car again.

“Jaime?” She interrupts, glancing at his side before slowly moving forward.

“… Yes?”

She breathes in and out, in and out.

“I never was much of a dog person.” She takes a moment, and she hears him laughing at that, _some_ , and maybe a bit nervously… but he _does_. Good. At least the air is way, way less tense right now. “ _Also_ , I’ve never said I wasn’t going to get myself a cat one day instead of corrupting Renly’s. And while I’m _not_ doing anything if we don’t make sure we’re both on the same page, _I don’t mind_. I’ve known for weeks at this point and it didn’t change my mind, so — don’t do that. All right? We can talk it out upstairs. But I’m _fine_ with it.”

She reaches out and grabs his hand again, good thing it’s an automatic car and she doesn’t need it to drive until they get to her place. He squeezes it back so hard she thinks he might crush it for a moment, but she thinks she can take it.

The road clears a moment later.

— —

She doesn’t say anything as they walk upstairs, but she can see that his shoulders lose tension the moment she closes the door behind her.

Right. They should talk. She supposes. Maybe.

She takes off her coat, waits for him to do the same with his, then he kicks off his shoes as well. She doesn’t tell him to leave them near the door.

Then she remembers that he barely ate a sandwich at lunch because they were planning to go out later and he wasn’t even feeling that hungry, which — well. She doubts they’ll go out now, for that matter, and _fine_ , maybe they _should_ talk, but the way he’s looking at her right now is strongly suggesting he’s done his share of it in the car. He’s sending her a fairly needy look, for that matter, and —

All right.

She has to get her shit together — she _did_ go look in some forums that were specifically providing resources for people who dom, in _that_ kind of setting, she has no idea of what she’s doing here but she _did_ read up on it enough to know what she is technically supposed to do.

Too bad the first thing was _talk_ , but if she starts off easily on this maybe they can tomorrow.

There were a few things that did sound both… standard and potentially not anything they couldn’t do without talking about it first.

She makes a motion for him to come closer, puts a hand on his cheek again — he immediately nuzzles into it, parting his lips in relief.

“I suppose you _don’t_ want to talk any more right now,” she says. He shakes his head.

“Fine. Do you want to try —”

He nods. Fine.

“Right. Okay, I suppose you’ve done your math about how you want it to go more than I did, so — just a couple things first?” He nods again.

“If anything you don’t want to do happens, say it and we’re stopping at once. _Please_ don’t pretend that you’re liking something when you don’t, all right? It’s for you, _you_ shouldn’t sit through anything you don’t want.” She waits for him to nod again — it takes him a bit longer than before, but he does it, and he has his eyes closed still, but she can imagine why. “Good. We’re done when you say we’re done. If something isn’t working for _me_ I’ll make it clear. Also, I doubt that tie is comfortable and you hate it, so — just go to the bedroom, find something more comfortable and find me after and — just go with it, I guess. Anything a problem?”

He shakes his head.

Then —

“Just,” he says, as if he’s putting effort into saying it, “you know how you were with… Renly’s cat? At that lunch?”

… So it _did_ work out.

“So… I should do what I was doing then or the closest I can get to?”

He nods, and she can see that there’s a knot in his throat, so she doesn’t ask for further confirmation. “All right.” She kisses the side of his head before letting her hand slide away from his face, her palm caressing that fading bruise on the top of his cheek, and then she lets him go to her room.

Right.

 _Right_.

She takes off her shoes as well, then runs into the kitchen and starts going through her cupboard, hoping that she has _something_ that might work for what she had in mind —

Well. She _does_ have a few cans of tuna — it’s somewhat sad and if she had known she’d have bought it fresh, but never mind that, that’ll be for next time unless the trial run doesn’t go catastrophically bad. She puts together a tuna salad that’s admittedly more fish than green, throws a few nuts in it for extra nutritional value and brings it back to the living room. He _is_ taking some time, but she figures that he has to get into the proper headspace and it might take a while, especially if it’s the first time he does it. _She_ needs time, she figures it’d be worse for him. She sits down on the sofa, putting the food in between her hip and the armrest.

Then the door to the hallway leading to the room opens and Jaime shows up on it — oh. He’s kind of looking downwards, not quite at her, but she can see at once that he’s not holding himself up straight as usual. He’s kept the bare feet and he’s wearing a pair of worn-out jeans that he’s kept here for ages, has more than a few holes in it and that he always said was extremely comfortable, so there’s that… and one of _her_ Iron Maiden t-shirts. She got it at a concert a few years ago and he always tends to steal it from her band t-shirts drawer, so she had sort of figured he really liked it for some reason, but — all right. She’s _not_ going to think of the implications of him wearing it now. It’s a bit large on him of course, leaving a good side of his neck and collarbone exposed, and then he looks at her, still seeming fairly unsure of what he’s doing.

She gives him a nod, then, not knowing where the hell that came from, she motions for him to get over the sofa, her tongue clicking the way it usually does when she wants any cat around to come towards her, and at that he slowly, slowly goes to his knees and then on his hands, going on all fours towards her, the shirt exposing some more skin around his neck, until he’s right under it.

Then he presses up against her left leg, his forehead touching it gently a few times, then rubbing it against her knee, once, twice, thrice, and she’s _not_ going to hyperventilate now — shit, he _really_ had to make sure she was aware of _that_ first thing, right?

“Hey,” she says, her hand creeping downwards, finding his hair, scratching behind his ears.

He purrs at that.

Louder than usual.

 _Okay then_. She does that for a bit, moving her fingers all over the back of his head, feeling his shoulders relax as he keeps on rubbing his head against her knee, and he has his eyes closed but he’s breathing a lot more evenly than before.

“You didn’t eat anything before,” she says, not trying to hide that she’s more concerned about that than she is about anything else. She pulls just slightly at his neck so that he opens his eyes, then grabs a handful of tuna salad from the bowl and moves her hand just in front of him, hoping that she’s not fucking it up already —

He glances up at her for a moment, then he turns his head and eats it, munching on it slowly, not using his hands for anything, and so she grabs another small bite and feeds it to him again. His tongue licks at the leftover bits of tuna left on her fingertips as she gently moves it near his lips, and she cards through his hair with her free hand as he swallows. “Nice,” she says, reaching for the third bite. “Next time I’ll find something better,” she says under her breath. “Never mind that. There, _there_ ,” she keeps on going as he swallows down and almost seems to search for her hand as she reaches out for the rest of the food. She _could_ hand him the entire bowl, but she doesn’t know if it would be too much at once _and_ admittedly she is… kind of getting into how this whole thing is going. She keeps on carding through his hair as she feeds him the entire bowl piece by piece, then puts it back on the coffee table and lets him lick her hand clean, and she can feel that he’s nowhere near as tense as he was when they began.

At least now she’s sure he won’t faint from a mixture of not having eaten, nerves and whatever it was that Cersei was thinking she was doing before. She cleans off her hand on a napkin she had brought with before, then she throws it away and looks back down at Jaime, who’s staring up at her with large, barely focused green eyes that seem to zero in on her the moment she looks at him. She’s not so sure of what she’s supposed to _say_ now, but then he lets out a half-saddened sound that really resembled the one Renly’s spoiled cat always does when she wants someone to pay attention to her.

She reaches back down, cupping his cheeks in her hands, running her thumbs over his cheekbones.

He purrs again, Fairly contently. She thinks of what Renly tells _his_ spoiled cat all the time. Some things might be too much. But some others, maybe… “But look at how pretty you are,” she says, and he _flushes_ , but he doesn’t tell her to stop.

Oh.

Good.

He makes that noise again.

“What, you want more?” She scratches behind his ears again. “How cute. Sure you can have more.” She nods at her lap, wondering when it happened that getting together with him made her start feeling glad of her size now because _well_ , she can handle it if he does that.

He glances at her, smirking just slightly, and then he actually _does_ almost jump on the sofa, and right, he apparently can manage to fold himself on her legs and he suddenly seems way smaller than he actually is… like just damned cats could. Not the point now, though. The point is that now he’s about lying in her lap, his forehead still rubbing against her collarbone, his spine arching as she runs a hand up and down, lightly — she kneads a bit at that bare patch of skin that the t-shirt leaves open, then she starts petting his hair again, and maybe she smiles to herself when he immediately nuzzles into it, and this is _way_ more intense than any of what she had previously dubbed _intense cuddling sessions_ , but no, she’s not minding it whatsoever.

For that matter, he’s being fairly shameless about it, since the moment she slows down she hears him making some kind of displeased sound at the back of his throat, and _wait_ , so _now_ he has no issues with being… less hung-up about asking for what he wants?

She smiles. “Got it, got it,” she says, spreading her legs a bit so he can settle in between them more comfortably, his nose downright nuzzling against her cheek while she can feel his heartbeat slowing down as he presses up against her.

Oh.

Guess what, he probably was as nervous as _she_ might have been.

She decides to not point it out. Instead, she kisses the side of his head, keeps on running her hands through his hair or his back as he stays curled up against her, barely moving. Once in a while she moves his head back a bit just to check on him, but whenever she looks at his eyes — which he _doesn’t_ close, thankfully — his pupils are blown and that he seems _extremely_ fine with how things are proceeding, so she figures that she’s doing it right _whatever_ it is she’s making up as she goes.

Good.

She supposes that if _this_ is the trial run, it could have gone worse. She keeps on whispering nonsense about how she could go around petting his hair for the rest of the night until he about passes out with his head against her shoulder, still curled up against her.

She smiles to herself and keeps on petting his hair until he wakes up.

— —

The next morning, they’re sitting at her table in the kitchen, he’s sort of grinning into his coffee even if he’s not looking straight at her half of the time and Brienne about yelps when she sits down and his ankle wraps around her own at once, pulling.

She laughs, kicking back slightly. “Hilarious,” she comments, taking a sip of tea. “So, I see that… it went well?”

“We _really_ have to talk about it, don’t we,” he says, but he doesn’t seem like he _doesn’t_ want to.

“Sorry but yes,” she says. “I mean, I wouldn’t… want to get it wrong or anything. And I need to know what you want out of it.”

He _does_ blush a bit at that.

“It’s just —” He takes a sip of coffee, breathes in. “It felt nice. That I really didn’t have to worry about anything except what I wanted in that one moment. Not that we didn’t do it before, but it wasn’t the same.”

“I get it,” she says. “Really, after — well. _Yesterday_. I think I get a lot of things. Let me guess, is it also because cats tend to do their thing and only come to you because they want to and they have no issues scratching if they don’t like you, or am I getting it completely wrong?”

He laughs. He’s still flushing, but not in the bad way. “What if it’s the case? I mean, I have a feeling I should learn to scratch, but other than that… well. Yes. But I mean, you heard her.”

“Believe me, you _do_ have a personality that doesn’t stop at following her around.”

He laughs harder, and she can only be happy that for some miracle he’s the one person in existence that doesn’t find her _dull_ when it comes to her sparkling conversation skills. That aren’t usually… well, sparkling. They’re _his_ thing more than hers.

“I know, it’s just… hard to remember it sometimes,” he sighs, putting the coffee cup down. “So, uh, I mean, if it was weird —”

“It was fine,” she admits. “Also, half of that was nothing you hadn’t already done before. If that was your roundabout way of asking you if it was a one time deal, the answer is no.”

“No?”

“Well, obviously we should discuss it more so I can avoid making it up as I go. But of course not. I didn’t _not_ like it.”

He smirks at that, showing pearly white teeth. “Oh, you didn’t _not_ like it?”

She smirks back. “I don’t know, you’re kind of adorable, all things considered.”

“I forbid you from _ever_ using that word again,” he mutters, shoving a cookie in his mouth.

“That’s gross, you can talk after you swallowed that,” she groans back, “but really. It’s fine. I — I didn’t hate it, actually I _did_ like it more than I thought I would when I was looking into it, if it’s something you want… we can do that, you know. I mean, let me know when you want to and we can. Really, it wasn’t a one time deal.”

The way he looks at her, you’d think she gave him ten birthday presents at once.

Then he stands up, moves to her side of the table and throws a leg over her thighs, his hands going to her shoulders, and when he leans down and kisses her it’s warm and hot and frenzied, and she immediately kisses back, her hand going to his hair as he moans into her mouth, and when he moves back his eyes are maybe a bit wet, and —

“I love you, you know that?”

He _did_ tell her other times.

Right now, though, it seems to have a whole other weight.

“I know,” she nods. “And I hope you know I love you, too, _right_?”

“Sometimes I have to convince myself I’m not making it up, but —” He starts, but she shakes her head.

“Hey,” she says, running her fingers behind his ear again, “maybe we should just… take advantage of whatever it is we’re doing to get over _that_ too, how about it?”

“Hm, I’m listening.”

“Let’s be real, you never ask for anything. And — I mean, I _do_ want this to go both ways, you know? If doing _that_ makes it easier for you to do it, it’s _fine_. Really. And if it means I get to give you what you want without having to drag it out of you, well, I’m not complaining. Also — I don’t know how far you’d go with it —”

“If you’re thinking about what I’m suspecting, I’ll skip on the purple sparkly gear. Not that I’m judging, but I don’t think I need _that_ now.”

She _does_ laugh a bit at that. “Well, sparkly purple on _you_ might be the only thing that you couldn’t pull off.”

“Did you just say I’m hot?”

“Did I ever give you the idea that I _don’t_ think you are?”

He laughs again, and doesn’t it feel good to hear it, and then looks back at her. “I don’t know,” he says, “honestly. I guess we can keep on doing it like yesterday whenever it is we might, and in case we can adjust?”

“Sounds good,” she nods.

“Oh,” he says, “another thing. I — I don’t think I could do it back at my place.”

 _Oh_. She realizes the implications just now, but that makes sense if he couldn’t even stay there for ten minutes longer yesterday.

“All right,” she says. “So… just here?”

“I don’t even know if I can stay there much longer,” he admits. “It’s just too — you know. And now that I know she’ll get in regardless, well. I just — I don’t know.”

“You know if this place was bigger —”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he shakes his head. “I can just ask Tyrion if I can take the guest room for a bit and look around, if I have to endure him and Bronn going down on each other I guess it’s a bargain.”

“Sounds fair,” she says. “So, next time you want to, just let me know, all right?”

“I will,” he says, and then he’s leaning down and kissing her again, and _again_ , and she decides that all things considered, this has gone over much better than she had imagined it might.

— —

He doesn’t ask for another couple of weeks, but he _does_ look like he’s doing somewhat better after. Surely he’s more relaxed, and he doesn’t call her at two in the morning after he goes back home — he’ll have to stay there another month until the lease expires.

That is, until they get _another_ of those hearings. Brienne notices him putting triple the effort into cheering up the kid she sent off to stay for good with his foster parents, and when he looks back at her as they go back to their office she can see that he hasn’t taken it too well at all.

Then his phone rings. He takes it. It’s his aunt.

“What — no, of course I didn’t forget it,” he sighs. “Yes, I’ll be there. No, I’m not staying after dinner. No, I can’t make an exception. All right. All right, I will.”

“… What’s wrong?” She asks.

He shrugs. “It’s my aunt’s anniversary dinner and she always makes it clear that she’d love _all_ of the family to be there. And then she usually lets everyone sleep at her place for the nice breakfast the next morning, but — well. I should see both my sister and my father for two hours, I think it’s enough effort.”

“You don’t have to go, you know.”

“I know, but she’s — I mean, I have no issues with _her_ and most of the rest of the family bar the immediate relatives, I’d feel like shit not going. Just, maybe, after I’m done, could I come over?”

She nods. “You want to —” She starts.

“Yes,” he says, not quite looking at her. “I — I might need it.”

“Sure,” she says, leaning down for a kiss, squeezing his shoulder. “I’ll be ready.”

He sends her another grateful look before he says he’ll go home to get dressed and see her at her place directly.

Brienne finishes to wrap up her paperwork.

Then instead of heading back home straight she finds the nearest market and buys some fresh tuna, and maybe back home she spends a good half hour combing through internet recipes before deciding to cook it seared with sesame — it admittedly doesn’t take too long and when she tries one of the pieces she decides it’s pretty damned good. She leaves it in the fridge, knowing perfectly that he’s _not_ going to eat much at the dinner — every time he goes to any family gathering of the kind he always comes back famished for some reasons. She wonders if it’s the food, the company or both, but she never asked and she doubts she will ever be invited.

She doesn’t expect him to be here soon, the dinner was at six thirty in the afternoon and from what she gathered usual Lannister gatherings drag for hours, so she changes into clean clothes and _maybe_ reads on her phone that tenth book about cat behavior that she might have downloaded since they started doing this for, well, _science_ , she supposes, and she’s about to go make herself some herbal tea when the keys turn inside the lock.

Wait.

It’s barely nine PM. It’s earlier than she had thought, and the moment Jaime walks inside the door she knows something went wrong — he looks exceedingly tired, his jacket has a wine stain on it, his mouth is drawn in a thin line and his hair is completely disheveled.

Shit.

She should ask him how it went, maybe, but the way he looks at her, it’s obvious it went catastrophically bad, especially given that his hand is shaking. Quite a lot. And he doesn’t look like he wants to _talk_.

“Last time’s clothes are in the same drawer,” she says instead. “Should I go about it the same way?”

He gives her a grateful nod, then he disappears behind the hallway’s door.

She takes in a deep breath, then goes to retrieve the fish plate, cuts the tuna into smaller pieces and brings it back to the living room. Honestly, she’s a bit worried that he looked that distressed, but — if the entire point is that he should make it easier for her to guess what he needs, then she just hopes he makes it clear.

Brienne doesn’t have to wait for long this time — Jaime shows back up at the door not long later, same get-up, same bare feet, same posture except that now his shoulders seem a bit more hunched, and then he stalks towards the opposite corner of the room, sinks down on the ground, puts his forehead on his knees and doesn’t move at all.

For a moment she’s half-worried, but —

She has a feeling he’s testing her.

She stands up, moving closer to him, but the moment she reaches down with a hand he about hisses and jerks back.

 _All right then_.

“Woah, all right,” she says, moving back — she moves some of that tuna on a small plate in between the wall and the coffee table, leaving it on the ground, leaving the rest in the plate she had ready. “Whenever you feel like eating, it’s there.”

She goes back to the sofa, grabs a book, pretends to read it and glances at him from the top of it.

He doesn’t move for some good ten minutes. She stays still, grabbing a crossword magazine instead. She glances at him once in a while as she gets through the first blank one she finds, until she sees that at least he’s not coiled on himself anymore. Now he has his arms loose around his knees and he’s taking short, shallow breaths. Sometimes he glances at her, but then back at the ground.

She goes back to her crossword.

She thinks she knows _exactly_ what he’s doing and she’s getting ideas about what went down — she could text Tyrion, probably, but she’ll wait for him to tell her if he wants to. She solves another five definitions, then gets stomped on the best picture Oscar winner for 1996, so she grabs her phone to look it up. Right, _Braveheart_. She puts it down. Jaime is still sitting there, but now his hands are on the ground.

She writes down forty-two across and moves on to forty-three. Then she checks if she can manage twenty-two vertical and _then_ she hears some noise.

She glances without showing too much interest and right, he’s making his way to the plate, all fours again, and maybe her heartbeat picks up a bit as he leans down and eats from there, hands on the ground. She makes sure that the rest of the food is visible next to her as he licks it clean, and she _could_ have said that there’s more over where she is if he wants it, but it’s obvious he’s testing her to see if she’ll let him take this at his own pace and she’s not going to push it. He’ll come when he wants to.

He shakes his head a bit as he leaves the empty plate behind, making his way slowly to the sofa. He hasn’t made a sound yet. She puts the crossword on the sofa’s arm, then places her left hand on the sofa, keeping on writing down thirty-one vertical with her right. There’s a very, very long moment in which she can hear him breathing fast below her, and in which nothing happens.

That is, until he mewls softly and tentatively licks her hand.

She immediately puts away the crossword and rubs at his cheek with her thumb before reaching up to cup it, going slow, feeling slightly relieved when he leans into it.

“Hey,” she says, keeping her voice low, “there you are. You want any more?” She reaches out, grabs one of the tuna pieces — he parts his lips, letting her slip it inside his mouth, and fuck, _fuck_ , she hadn’t thought that _this_ specific part would feel as intimate as it is right now, but she has those green eyes of his fixed on hers and he looks tired as hell but also like he’s halfway relieved, and she feels his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly with each piece she feeds him, and she takes care to run her fingers through his hair casually as she does it. She doesn’t have to encourage him to finish the entire thing, which only speaks to how much he _hasn’t_ eaten before, most likely, and then she grabs some Purell she had left on the coffee table because she figured washing her hands wasn’t going to happen and she doesn’t want to leave his face smelling of raw fish for the next day or so. The moment she’s done she looks back down at him, holding a hand out. He tentatively presses the side of his face against it, his eyes closed again.

She runs her thumb along his cheek once, twice, then moves her other hand to his hair, smiling slightly when he purrs low in his throat as she does. “How much of a darling are you?” She presses on — he licks her wrist, once, twice, always mewling softly, and at that she moves her hand down his neck, and he presses against it at once.

_Well._

She gets her legs off the sofa, careful to get them around him so she doesn’t have to turn her spine too uncomfortably — she runs her hands softly along his back, under the shirt, his face nuzzling against her neck, as he still purrs low against her skin, and after a bit his hands sort of move up to her shoulders before they fall back down. Admittedly, he also looked dead on his feet when he came inside.

She helps him up on the sofa, not too smoothly but somehow she does, hand still carding through his hair — he exhales and when his head falls down to her shoulder he finds a patch of naked skin and bites softly on it once, barely enough to feel it, then twice, then thrice, and wait, he didn’t do that last time, but —

Wait a moment.

What did every single book on cat behavior she read just to make sure she wasn’t getting shit wrong — she’s been around a lot of cats in her life but never _owned_ one so she figured she’d make sure — say about _this_ specific thing? That it was one way to show their owner they considered them family, among other things?

Brienne’s feelings on how the dinner has gone aren’t changing. But she can discuss it tomorrow.

She kisses the top of his head, ruffling the hair at its back, scratching behind his ears for a moment before doing it again, and again, and at this point he got definitely warmer, his skin was pretty chilled before, and he’s moved on to nibbling at the crook of her neck, probably not hard enough to leave signs, but that’s fine even if he does, she wouldn’t mind.

She half-smiles against the side of his head, kissing it again, still marveling at how a guy who’s an inch shorter than her and definitely not _slight_ can manage to fit himself against her like _that_ , but when she tries to sit up straighter he jerks slightly, pushing her back where she’s sitting, his curled hand moving back on her thigh a moment later.

Right. So she shouldn’t move. She thinks she got the message. “Got it,” she says, “not that I’m going anywhere, but got it, you’re in charge here.” She can feel him nuzzling against her throat, just where he was biting at her before. She’s still messing up the hair at the back of his head, and his heartbeat is maybe faster than usual but not _that_ much. “But look at how precious you can be,” she goes on, and she thinks he might be smiling slightly against her neck.

She doesn’t move until he slowly lowers himself down and drops his head in her lap without too many ceremonies. She does sit up straighter at that, and goes on telling him that and petting his hair until he passes out… with his back turned to her.

Which, last she checked, was the ultimate sign of trust or _something_.

She decides she won’t mind spending the night on the sofa, if he doesn’t wake up first.

— —

“Shit,” Jaime protests the next morning, “next time I’m preemptively authorizing you to drag me to bed regardless of how much I might complain.”

“What,” she asks as she checks on the coffee, “your back isn’t agreeing with your choices?”

“Not at all,” he groans, “but — it was worth it.”

Brienne turns just enough to see him wink at her, and good thing he looks loads better than yesterday, even if he still seems somewhat tired.

“Good to know,” she tells him as she turns to hand him his mug, “and do I have to guess that you ended up sitting somewhere near your sister and she made sure to show everyone how much of an ass she can be?”

He takes the coffee, holding the mug mid-air. “… Did you figure that out just from —”

“What you were doing yesterday?” She shrugs. “Sort of. I had time to think about it.”

“Right,” he says, “give me your best specific guess.”

She clears her throat. “I mean, since you spent half an hour wondering if I’d force you to do _anything_ and you were obviously trying to figure out if I’d leave you alone the moment you made clear you wanted it, I guess she was up in your space not giving a damn if you didn’t want it. Possibly she might have implied that I’ll get tired of you at some point soon.”

“… How the _fuck_ did you guess that now?” He sounds halfway impressed and halfway very, very surprised as he takes a sip of that coffee. Brienne pours hers and goes to sit in front of him.

“Because the first time you just went with it, yesterday you seemed a lot more tentative. Could only have been that you might be worrying for nothing that I got tired already.”

“… Well, fuck. Go on.”

“Considering that you obviously were starving when you arrived, whatever she said was bad enough that you didn’t have anything to eat over there or if you did, it was the bare minimum. I can also go on a limb and presume that since you seemed to be very intent on making me understand that you are in fact in love with me, which I assure you I was not doubting but it’s always nice to hear that… she might have implied that I might not reciprocate it for long and that at some point I’ll understand that my life choices are terrible and you’ll have to go back to her begging for forgiveness. How good was I?”

“Considering that you’ve met her _once_ , entirely too much,” he says, and he’s sort of grinning but it’s not really too heartfelt. “Well, shit, I don’t think I have anything else to add since you about nailed it. But you seriously got all of that from —”

“Don’t take it as an insult,” she smiles back, “but you’re fairly transparent when you do _that_. And I’d rather have that than hearing you inform me that everything is fine and I don’t need to worry.”

“Okay, okay, I’m yielding,” he laughs, but it’s not nervous now, at least. Then he sighs. “And I might have been testing you, I guess. Sorry, I don’t —”

“If you needed to make sure I would give you some damn space I think that’s the point of it, isn’t it?”

He nods, finishing his coffee. “Listen,” he says, sounding tentative. “I’m going to my brother’s from tomorrow. Fuck the lease. The only thing you didn’t guess is that she implied that she’d drop by to check on whether you dumped me yet or not, and honestly, I’m done. But — I was wondering.”

“Do go ahead.”

“Maybe — I mean, you did say this place is getting too small, and we’re both far from the court, but if we pooled resources together maybe we could get a bigger place that’s also closer? I mean, it would make sense, but just if you —”

“Jaime, if this was asking me to move in with you, you could have just asked and I’d have said yes ten minutes ago.”

At _that_ , his eyes go slightly wider. “You would’ve.”

“Sure.” She reaches out, covers his hand with her own. “Of course I would.”

He doesn’t even reply before standing up, grabbing her arm, pulling her up and kissing her savagely, and then they’ve forgotten breakfast and made their hasty way to her bedroom, where they lose their clothes very, very fast.

— —

They do it a few more times in between looking for a new place, always at her apartment, and while it’s more like the first time round, to Brienne’s relief, she can’t help a certain feeling, as in, that he thinks she gets nothing back from it and she’s only doing it for _him_.

And fine, it’s _his_ thing first and foremost, but it’s not like she finds it boring or like she hates it or only does it to pay him a favor. Except that she has told him more than once the morning after and he still doesn’t seem to be fully convinced of it.

She’s pondering how to make him _get_ it when she stops in front of a shop that sells furniture, kitchenware and various other amenities for home decor.

So: they did find a place, ten minutes from the courthouse, absolutely affordable if they pool in resources, one bedroom, one living room, two other smaller ones that they could recycle for themselves separately if they don’t have guests. They have a lease and they more or less halfway moved in, except that they also threw out half of their old furniture and Jaime insisted to sell off most of his old one, which means that they’re both looking around for new pieces these days. That’s why she keeps her eyes open around home decor shops that might save her hellish trips into IKEA.

That’s why she notices the pillows.

It’s a large set, half price discount, some ten of them, all different sizes — the smallest is a regular sofa pillow, the largest two would get to her mid thigh, if held up vertically.

She walks inside the shop. The pillows’ covers are all silk, soft and smooth, and them being half price means that they’re actually affordable. Huh. They could go in one of the guest rooms —

 _Or maybe in the living room_. Unless they had guests, it’s large enough that they’d fit comfortably in one of the corners, and if she set it up herself and present it as, well, somewhere he could go sit when he’s in headspace and he’d rather be on his own or just chill there, maybe he would get that _she doesn’t mind_ and as weird as it might have seemed like in the beginning she kind of really did get into it. If anything, she does like that she’s somehow doing _something_ for him that he obviously likes, and the more it goes on the smoother it gets, so — why not?

She buys the pillows, arranges for a home delivery in some three days, adds a new lamp to the count and leaves the shop hoping it’s going to work out. It should arrive just a few hours before he comes back from the yearly training workshop he has to take for work — hers is in a couple months. The day of the delivery, as she goes home she stops in front of the sewing shop near the court and so _maybe_ she goes in and spends a fair amount of money to buy a few balls of cashmere yarn, and maybe she’s taking this a tad too seriously, _but_ she just wants him to get the message. Hopefully he does.

The delivery arrives on time — she signs it off, throws away the boxes, then arranges the pillows around the empty corner of the living room. _That_ takes her a while — somehow it never seems quite right until she manages to put the larger ones both on the ground and against the wall so that it’s comfortable on the sides as well, then she places the medium sized ones around it and the smaller ones on the inside and covers the entire thing with a soft green blanket. Okay. Good. She’ll keep the yarn for now. She isn’t even sure if it’s _too much_ or if he’d want it, but — she has it just in case, right?

Right. It actually looks somewhat cozy. He also shouldn’t be at the bus station before half an hour, so she’s absolutely on time. She can make herself some tea and maybe get herself ahead with paperwork. Which she’d really rather _not_ do and not having him around for one week showed her exactly how much harder it is to handle things around their office if he’s not there.

Then she gets a text.

 

 _Guess what, for once the bus was early. I’m taking the one home now, see you soon_.

 

She smiles to herself, wondering for the umpteenth time when it happened that she ended up in the kind of relationship in which she grins like an idiot when exchanging texts. Maybe one day she will stop wondering. She texts him if he wants anything to eat, he says that after a week of crappy seaside reservation hotel food he’s down with pizza or something that you’d equally not find in the seaside reservation hotel, so she orders some in, timing it so that it gets here some twenty minutes after he should be back.

When his keys turn in and he drops his suitcase on the ground, he looks tired as hell but in the good way.

“So,” she smiles as he shrugs off his coat, “at least it was useful to something, differently from _my_ workshop last year?”

“More than the last time,” he admits. “The food sucked but the rest was decent enough.”

“Well, let me tell you, if you’re not around the office I want to shoot myself, so I might be _very_ glad I don’t have to wade through all of that paperwork on my own.”

“See, our category’s good for something,” he grins, and then he leans up to kiss her — she kisses back once, twice, and she’d do it some more, but —

“Uh,” she says, “I might — have taken a liberty. With the decorating.”

“You _did_?” He asks, raising an eyebrow. “You didn’t paint the bathroom pink or _something_ , did you?”

“No, uh, I just — oh, just, there.” She nods towards the other end of the room, following him there until he’s in front of the whole pillows nest she put together.

She sees the moment he puts two and two together.

“Brienne, is _that_ what I think —”

“Yes,” she nods. “I mean, uh, I saw them and I thought, you always end up spending time on the damned ground if you’re not finding me directly, and I thought that maybe you’d like it if you’d had some place where it’d be comfortable instead? I mean, just if you’d like, but — you could just lie down there when you feel like it instead of suffering on the floor.”

His lips part slightly, his eyes wide, but he seems more surprised than anything else.

“And you put it in the _living room_?”

She shrugs. “It’s _our_ place. And I mean, if people come over and you’d rather not have it there we can just stuff them in the guest room, it’s pillows after all. But… I mean, as long as it’s just me around or people you might trust to know, why not? It’s your thing, but it it doesn’t mean it has to be shut in the guest room.”

He stares at it, then at her, then —

Then he turns on his side and just about hugs her fast enough that she almost feels like falling off her feet — she hugs him back the moment she knows she’s not gonna crash on the pillows herself, but — well. She’s relieved that worked.

“Anyone ever told you you’re incredible or what?”

“Just you, my dad and my thesis advisor, I think,” she huffs back. “Hey, it was really nothing, I just thought you’d like it.”

He shakes his head. “Never mind. Brienne, for —” He leans back, looking at her. “I think you’re severely underestimating the number of people I know who have as a priority _what I would like_ and not what I can do for them, but… really, thank you.” He sounds halfway relieved, too, which means that maybe she can bring up the _next_ issue.

“Well, full disclosure, it’s there for whenever you want. I mean, if you feel like it then you can go for it, no need to run it through me or anything.”

“… This is when you point out that you realized I’ve only asked after I had a run-in with Cersei or something close to it, isn’t it,” he laughs, shaking his head.

“Maybe,” she confirms.

“Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” He doesn’t seem too displeased about it.

“I’m observant,” she grins back. “Anyway. It’s just, so you know.”

“… Are those _silk pillows_?”

He leans down, touching one.

She knows she’s flushing. “One, they were half price. Two, sorry if I’d want you to be comfortable.”

“Stop doing that, it makes me want to skip dinner and drag you to bed directly,” he grins, and it’s probably a good thing that the pizza arrives right then.

Not that he doesn’t drag her to bed later, and not that she doesn’t enjoy each single second of it.

— —

The pillows do lie untouched for a few days after, but she figures he’ll make use of them when he wants to.

Then one day she gets home after he does to find him dressed in the usual attire, curled up against the one in the back, and she knows for sure that today was a pretty good day at the office and he didn’t talk to his sister or his father or anything of the kind.

Her first thought is _oh, finally he’s realized he can do it whenever he wants and not whenever he thinks I’ll see his reasons for wanting it_. He also doesn’t look particularly distressed — when she walked in, he was running his fingers over the blanket and turning the corner over in his fingers, but that was it.

She takes off her shoes, flashing a smirk his way, then she decides she might give it a try.

“Hey,” she says, “I see someone’s getting comfortable.” She moves closer to him, casually leans down to pet his head. He lets her, shaking it a moment later, but he doesn’t give her any sign that he wants her to fuck off. He maybe slides away from it instead, and does it another couple of times, but the next one he does let her ruffle his hair for a bit before lying back down on the pillows. Looking fairly satisfied with himself, for that matter.

Then he turns on his side and starts fiddling with the blanket again.

“What,” she says, “getting bored? Maybe I can help you with that while I make dinner.”

She stands up, goes to the bedroom, finds the red yarn she got before, then goes back to the living room.

“Catch,” she says as she throws it his way.

He does catch it at once, he does have good reflexes in general. For a second, he looks at her like he had expected everything but _that_.

She expects him to call it off if he needs, but then he turns his back on her, bringing the yarn with.

“I’ll be off making dinner then,” she says, figuring she’ll let him amuse himself until he gets bored of it. She glances at him once in a while, but he’s always in the same position — she goes for fried chicken bits, making enough for the two of them, and she’s nowhere near surprised when not long later his forehead presses against her hip as he goes up on his knees. She looks down at him, ruffling his hair again. He licks her hand, mewling softly, and at least now it’s pretty damn obvious what he wants.

“Right, have a few,” she says, feeding him a couple of the chicken bits before smoothing down his hair again. “You can wait five minutes for the rest.” He tries to scowl for a moment, then goes back to the pillows. Well, good thing he’s actually having _fun_ now, she decides, and it ends up with her dropping to sit on the side of the pillows and feeding him his half while he stays half-sprawled on the blanket and twists the yarn in between his fingers, but she doesn’t mind it whatsoever. He stays there while she does the dishes, and then she goes back to the sofa, turning a movie on, wanting to make it blatantly clear that she’s up for whatever he wants including ignoring her until he feels like it.

Turns out, _whatever he wants_ is him pretty much dropping his dead weight on her legs some ten minutes later -- well, _shit_ , given that she barely has time to notice that he crawled off the pillows, got to the sofa and about jumped on her, he can’t envy _any_ damned feline the reflexes, that’s for sure.

“Well, hello there,” she says, sitting back up against the armrest as he about curls in her lap again, but this time he’s fairly enthusiastic as he leans forward and nibbles lightly at her ear. She laughs a bit, a hand going to pet his hair, the other rubbing circles on the small of his back. He nuzzles against her at once, and — she wonders if she’s ever seen him just enjoying himself like that for the sake of it and she has a feeling that unless she counts all the admittedly great sex they have, the answer is… not so many. “Aren’t you just the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” she rattles on, and she’s pretty sure that he damn preens as she says it. Sure thing he does. “Yeah, well, no one’s denying it. Aren’t you?” He keeps on purring low in the back of his throat as she keeps on petting his hair lazily, but given that she’s going to have hickeys tomorrow from how much he’s nibbling at the same spot on her collarbone, sucking slightly on it later, she’ll let him have it, especially since he’s not obviously overthinking it or holding himself back or whatever else.

Honest, if she had known maybe she’d have sprung out the yarn before, but now that she knows she’ll see to maybe give him more obvious hints that she’s more than fine with the state of things. She’s definitely not going to point out that by now he’s pretty much sitting on her legs with all his weight down on her, but that’s fine, she can handle that. She’ll be fine with keeping on petting his hair until he gets bored, and if she can feel him preening every single time she tells him that she’s delighted that he’s being so good for her, well, she’s not going to stop him.

— —

The next morning, she can see that he’s _way_ more relaxed than usual. It’s about obvious. He doesn’t protest when she ruffles his hair again before dropping the usual coffee in front of him.

“I guess I should have told you that I didn’t want to push it because I figured you’d get bored or decide it was too much?”

“That sounded like a rhetorical question,” she replies, grabbing a lemon muffin from a box she got yesterday coming back from work. He grabs a chocolate one in return.

“I guess it was,” he admits.

“What was that convinced you, the yarn?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have gotten it if you hated it or whatever, right?”

“‘Course no, but I don’t. You know, some of us do like it to see happy our partners that we share both apartment and office with. And if you haven’t noticed, I don’t get exactly bored throughout.”

He nods, looking like he’s pondering if he should say what he’s thinking or not. Then he shrugs. “Fuck it,” he says, “if the point is also that I should tell you things more easily after, might as well make the fucking effort.”

“Jaime?”

“Listen, it’s just — this is going to sound pathetic and whatnot, but — that’s the point. I mean, do you think that the only other person I’ve been with other than you ever gave a damn? Every time I think about how things were, I just realize how it was always about _her_ and almost never about _me_ and yes, she actually did look halfway bored the few times it was. The fact that you _don’t_ fucking get bored doing something that _I_ wanted to do and that you wouldn’t have thought of if not for me is the novelty here. And I didn’t realize how much exactly you might _not_ have gotten bored until these last few days, so — well. That’s it.” He bites down on the muffin. She shakes her head and covers his hand with hers.

“I get it,” she assures him, tangling their fingers together. “Anyway, full disclosure: I probably don’t get the same things you get out of it, but I like it anyway and I do get different ones out of it, for that matter. God forbid, I actually _do_ enjoy it because I like to see I’m an active part in making you get you deserve nice things from life, so — just know that. Also, I’m not above throwing yarn at you until you get it.”

“Fuck you, Tarth,” he snorts into his coffee.

“I’d like to see you try,” she flirts back, still sort of unbelieving that she _can_ do this and it doesn’t feel weird.

They _do_ fuck later, quickly, just before going into work, but the way he looks at her as he licks his lips after she gets off his face makes her insides go so warm they might verge into burning hot in a blink, and so maybe she _does_ place an online order for more yarn during their coffee break.

She has a feeling they might need it more than she had pictured.

— —

Admittedly, since he doesn’t press her to go further with it or anything, Brienne doesn’t _press_ it in turn. The arrangement works fine the way it is, Jaime definitely _isn’t_ having secondhand doubts about whether she has issues with it or not, they scene once or twice per week and it _did_ work wonders when it came to Jaime actually putting two and two together about _asking for things_. She’s sure he doesn’t do it as much as she’d like, as in, _whenever he feels like he needs them_ , but he does it a lot more often than before, and while she could read him without a problem _before_ now she realizes that she can read him even _better_ , so… it’s working. Which is a damn good thing, if you ask her. Still, she doesn’t ask if he wants to change up the routine a bit or anything else, but he also doesn’t tell her he needs more or _different_ , so that’s how it goes on for a while.

That is, until a few months later they’re out of one of the hearings, the social worker with the car license is _of course_ late and therefore Jaime is entertaining both of the siblings she had for this particular hearing — both orphaned because of a car crash, no other relatives because both sets of grandparents are dead and no other family member is available to take them in, so she momentarily set them in the best group home she has on her list, she’ll call them later to see that they don’t fuck it up when it comes to possible adoptions but they’re fairly reliable — and Cersei Lannister shows up in the hallway, looking fairly damn angry, though not at the both of them.

 _Right_ , now Brienne remembers that she and Robert Baratheon having gotten back together they probably have to do meetings with social workers and so on given how the divorce had gone, from what Jaime told her, but obviously they wouldn’t put _her_ on it when it’s not her specialization, and they wouldn’t put Jaime on it since they’re related.

The glare she sends the both of them is fairly scalding, but Jaime just glares back at her and then goes back to talking to the kids.

Huh.

Well, she’s _not_ going to complain about it, considering that after the lamp business he had nightmares for two months.

The social worker gets there some ten minutes later with endless apologies, Brienne glares at her hoping that she realizes that if it happens again she’s having the kids reassigned, and he does let out a half-relieved breath after they leave, but he looks fine, otherwise.

“Hey,” she says, “everything all right?”

“Yes,” he shrugs, “I just hadn’t counted on running into her _here_ , but never mind that. Most likely she’ll drop by the office when she’s done, if I know her.”

“Do you want me to tell her to fuck off?”

He considers it. Then he shakes his head. “No,” he says, “let her come. First, I can’t have you kicking her out every time, as hot as it happens to be. Second… I can’t avoid it forever.”

Brienne nods as they head back to their office — she turns on her computer, updates the paperwork for this one case while he does the same with his half, and since they’re both good at their jobs and didn’t procrastinate on doing it previously, they’re done in maybe fifteen minutes.

“Damn,” she says, “we’re not off the clock for another two hours.”

“… And we’re on call today, are we not? I mean, until we’re on shift.”

“Sadly so,” Brienne confirms.

“I suppose you won’t agree to go annoy Brynden Tully in _his_ office now, will you?”

“ _Please_ ,” she scoffs, “he’d murder the both of us and we _both_ want that salary raise, or how would I replace your silk pillows when you wear them out?”

He pretends to be outraged at the suggestion. “It was _your_ idea and I’m not _wearing them out_ , excuse me.”

“I know,” she grins back, “and I’m not ever regretting my purchases, don’t worry.”

“How enchanting,” he says, and then he stands up, evidently assessing if her chair can hold them both, and she doesn’t stop him when he sits down on her legs, his thighs going around hers, his hands in her shirt, dragging her head upwards. “Then again, if we’re done working, surely no one’s going to stop us from doing _this_ now, are they?”

She doesn’t reply and rather drags his head down so she can kiss him properly, his mouth against hers, his tongue circling her lips, and she has a feeling she should go lock the door lest they decide to lose clothes and someone walks in on them —

And then the door opens.

 _Here it goes then_.

Cersei is indeed standing on the threshold — Brienne reaches up and moves an arm around Jaime’s waist without even thinking about it, but she felt his heartbeat speed up for a moment and she figured she’d make clear she was… well, _there_.

Jaime looks up at Cersei as Brienne turns her head to at least see what’s going on.

“Cersei,” he says, “not that I was looking forward to seeing you, but as you can see, I was busy.”

She can feel that his heartbeat is speeding up more, but his voice isn’t betraying it. Well, not bad news at all then.

“Well, we need to talk,” she says.

“Actually, we don’t,” he shrugs, his hand grasping Brienne’s shoulder. “Do we?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she spits back. “Since apparently your new number is unreachable —”

“Yes, I blocked you for a reason,” he goes on. “I thought the message was clear.”

“Jaime,” she goes on, “you _haven’t_ —”

“I did,” he keeps on, “and I’d rather make out with my girlfriend here rather than _talk_ about whatever it is you think is so important when I already know what it is, and no, I’m fine where I am, thank you very much.”

They stare at each other. Brienne very much feels like she shouldn’t be here, but also like she _should_ , so she doesn’t move away and just makes her grasp slightly tighter.

“You really lowered your standards,” she spits back a moment later.

Brienne about rolls her eyes — as if it’s the worst thing she’s ever heard.

“I don’t know,” he replies, “maybe I realized I _do_ have standards and I’d lower them if I gave you any more satisfaction than you already got. Cersei, leave. Really.”

She doesn’t, not yet, but it’s obvious she’s reluctant to come in. Then she half-sneers. “You’d _lower_ them. What does she even bring to the table?”

Brienne feels his heartbeat speed up again. She clears her throat.

“I don’t know,” she replies, staring at Cersei directly, “I don’t treat people like they’re at my beck and call, for one. You should try it sometimes, I can assure you it brings you places.”

“Then good luck,” Cersei says, smirking in a way that honestly creeps her out, “because it won’t be long before you realize he isn’t much good for anything else.”

 _Then_ she takes a step back, but before she can close the door, Jaime has gone back to his feet and stalked back to the threshold, and now they’re staring down at each other and she stands up at once because she doesn’t want it to get ugly.

“You know what,” he says, smirking in a way that’s almost too sharp, the way it used to be when they just met and he wouldn’t answer seriously to one single thing she asked for, “even if it was the case, and I assure you it’s fucking not, I think I’d have a lot more fun being at _her_ beck and call than yours. For one, she’d give a fuck, and it’s plenty obvious that you don’t. And please don’t bother showing up again.”

Then he slams the door in her face.

A moment later, they can hear heels moving back through the corridor.

“Well,” Jaime says, “now _that_ was fucking intense.”

He sounds like he has just run a marathon, but — not like it’s a _bad_ thing.

She moves up next to him and puts an arm around his shoulders. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “I mean, I can barely believe she fucked off without pressing more than she did, but — I am, yes.”

“And is there a reason why you’re not quite looking at me now?” She asks, squeezing his arm, and he half-smiles before looking up at her.

He looks halfway relieved as he does.

Something doesn’t add up.

“I, uh, wasn’t sure of how you’d take the last thing I said.”

“That you’d rather be at my —” She stops, then narrows her eyes. Wait a moment. She thinks she needs to do some math here, because she’s sure that he _doesn’t_ mean it the way Cersei most likely intended it except that she can’t know, but if he thought _she_ might have a problem with it —

Brienne has a feeling that if _reading Jaime Lannister’s hidden meanings_ was some kind of university subject, she’d be close to getting flying marks, but she’ll see if she guessed right.

“Do I have to deduce,” she says, very slowly, “that you…” she goes on, moving a hand to the back of his neck, “might want to, uh, upgrade? When we —”

He nods before she can say it.

Oh.

She squeezes the back of his head slightly, her hand circling the back of his neck.

He nods again.

 _All right then_.

“And,” she goes on, “I’m not saying no, but — I need you to elaborate.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“With _words_ , Lannister. Or we’re doing nothing.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine, _fine_. It’s just — _that_ is the damned point.”

“ _That_? What, that I’d _give a fuck_? I thought it went unsaid.”

“Yes, but — that’s not it,” he sighs, then looks at her. “Shit, I don’t know how to put it — oh, fine. You give a fuck, so I know you wouldn’t take advantage of it or that you’d think it was _for real_ , and I know it would be up to _me_ and I could still call the shots on how it goes even if we _upgraded_ and — since after years with Cersei I know exactly how it feels metaphorically to — belong in that way to someone when I’m _not_ calling the shots or I have no choice in it, maybe I want to see how it feels when I do. But if it’s too much —”

She shakes her head, feeling a certain warmth spread through her chest, never mind how terrible he is at asking for things.

“Just one question,” she says.

“… Yes?”

“Do you want to choose what you’d need to wear or do I?”

He laughs in relief, and when he turns his grin at her, it’s nowhere near sharp. “You know what, as long as you avoid the sparkly purple stuff and — well, the _excessive_ stuff, I’ll leave you to it.”

She smiles back. “Should I sneak out of work earlier then?”

“What am I hearing, _you_ proposing to skip out on work? Is it the apocalypse happening?”

“No,” she rolls her eyes. “Also, I never said _you_ could skip out on work.”

“Fine,” he concedes. “I’ll see you at home.”

She decides she likes how that sounds like.

— —

Fact is, she realizes when she walks out of the courthouse, she doubts that there are shops nearby selling the kind of gear that she needs, and on top of that… she doesn’t know if she wants anything like the stuff she saw sold online. She’ll find something less obvious at some other point. For now, she ends up at this ethnic shop and buys a thin strip of dark green leather that should be good enough for the moment, feels very, very soft and wouldn’t be too constrictive.

She goes home after getting some more fresh salmon and cooks it while she waits for him to come back — he does, right on time, just as she’s done.

“So,” she says, “I got the first one I found that looked good for the moment, but if you want to have a look now —”

“I’d rather be surprised,” he says before disappearing into the bedroom.

Well then.

She cuts the salmon, figuring that she’ll deal with fingers smelling faintly of both fish and orange for the evening but not minding in the slightest, then brings it to the living room where he’s already sitting on the pillows wearing the usual attire — she puts the food on the nearby table, then goes to get her bag and sits down on the side of the outer, taller pillow.

“Good enough for now?” She asks, holding the leather strip out.

“Shit,” he grins, “you actually _looked_ for one instead of getting the first thing that could work?”

“Sure,” she says, “green is totally your color. So, uh, should I?”

“I’ve been wanting you to for weeks,” he admits under his breath.

“Next time you can just ask,” she says, opening the clasp.

He swallows, arching up his neck, moving forward so that he’s inches from her — right. _Right_. She steadies her fingers before delicately wrapping the leather band around his throat — she doesn’t tie it too tight, just enough that he’d feel it and she could maybe slip a finger inside but that would be it. And well, that green _does_ look good against that warm skin of his, and so maybe she runs a fingers over the surface, once, twice, while she can see his throat working against it slightly, but it doesn’t seem like he’s struggling to breathe or anything, just adjusting to the feeling.

“Everything all right?” She asks, her hands going to his hair again but without doing anything else in case he wants her to go slower or take it off —

He moves swiftly, about flipping them over so she’s landed on the pillows and wait, she always avoided sitting in here properly because it was _his_ space first and foremost, but then he about pushes her so that she’s with her back to the wall and he has about curled into her lap all over again, nuzzling into her hand when she runs it over the back of the leather strip.

“I guess it is,” she smiles, petting his hair all over again. “So, I should get a proper one soon then?”

He bites down softly on her neck again at that, and she can feel him smiling against her neck.

She holds him closer.

Well, she might start looking into it then.

 

 

***

 

 

Sometimes Jaime thinks to himself, usually before he drops the collar into Brienne’s hands before kneeling at her feet, that there’s a certain irony in how his chief reason to want to do _this_ , long before he ever considered fessing up to her in the first place and he had considered just doing it on his own with the door locked, was that it seemed like a good outlet to work out at least part of his damned baggage when it came to Cersei and these days, when he does, he barely even thinks about her at all.

Oh, maybe he will think about her _before_ he lowers his forehead against Brienne’s knee and lets her tie the collar around his throat — the definitive one is still dark green leather, but it covers his throat completely and it’s sturdier, even if still soft enough that it doesn’t chafe or feel uncomfortable, with a silver clasp on the back. Not as often as he used to in the beginning, when every single time he walked out of Brienne’s bedroom and dropped to his knees he’d breathe in relief as he felt rough fingers with short nails tangling in his hair not long later, rather than sharp, manicured ones tugging hard enough to hurt. Or when every time she’d call him darling or precious or pretty and _meant_ it, his eyes would burn thinking of how the only things Cersei ever whispered in his ear were _you belong with me_ and _you’re a part of me_ and _you’re my mirror_ and the likes. Or when he would be even too aware of his heartbeat’s speed every time he’d move into Brienne’s lap because he’d hear his damned sister whisper _how pathetic of you, always begging for scraps_ all along and it wouldn’t disappear until he only focused on her hands and her mouth and her arms and her words.

He wishes he could avoid thinking about her period, but even if it’s less, these days, a _lot_ less, on some nights he will wake up feeling her nails on his skin or her voice somewhere above him or remembering how her hands used to sting when they argued, or remembering that string of texts he got after telling her they were done

 

( ~~ _how interesting, i’m giving you a week before you crawl back to me because you’ll see that there’s no place for you everywhere else, dogs always come back after all and what else are you?_~~ )

 

and he’ll wonder if the day he finally _stops_ thinking about her period will come, but even if it doesn’t —

 _Even if it doesn’t_ —

That doesn’t matter much now, because these days, the moment that clasp closes around his neck with that gentle push, even if _that_ might be the reason he asked in the first place

 

(it’s not _only_ that anymore, it hasn’t been for a while)

 

he just… doesn’t even think about her at all.

He doesn’t, because with it he realized it’s _way_ easier to slip from all of that mess he can still hear in his head, and it’s not slipping _away_ same as he used to do back when he’d forget chunks of time or when he’d think about something else entirely every time he couldn’t deal with anything happening around him or when his brother would have to call out loudly for his attention because he’d go somewhere else without even realizing he had in the first place every time he tried telling Cersei _no_ , but it’s — something else entirely.

When he does, these days, he’s not thinking _what if she hates it, what if I do something wrong, what if she gets tired, what if it sounds ridiculous, what if she realizes how pathetic it is, what if she decides I’m not worth it_. He used to, back in the day, before he managed to talk himself out of it and just _stop_ worrying about things, which was the damned point of the exercise.

Now he _doesn’t_.

“I’ll go down to get groceries for one moment,” Brienne says after fastening the collar, when he doesn’t immediately do anything to keep her where she is — she _does_ have the routine figured out by now, and the moment she realized that sometimes maybe he needs a few moments on his own in the beginning she adapted at once, and doesn’t he love her for it, too. “Be good for me while I’m out, hm?” She stands, ruffling his hair as she goes to grab her bag, and he smiles a bit as she does — if she’s getting food then she’ll be away a bit but not too long, and he already isn’t really counting how much, the way he might otherwise. It doesn’t matter. Not really.

He makes his way to the pillows as the door closes, relishing that they’re right under one of the windows, which means that when he lies down on them they’re soft, silky and _warm_ already, so very warm, and since it’s a nice day and there’s sunlight out he immediately stretches along them so that he can soak it up. It’s not as warm as _she_ is, but it’ll do for now, and so he lets himself bask in the feeling of warmth seeping into his bones and how soft and familiar is the silk under his feet and hands, everything else taking a step back when it comes to what he’s worrying about right now. He breathes in and out, in and out

 

( _so what if he used to do this during summer in uni and people would joke about how only cats could stand that much heat on them_ )

 

until he opens his eyes again, not moving much if at all but taking in the room again. Still empty, still warm, with those softsoft pillows under him — he turns on his stomach, the sunlight covering his back, and he reaches down for the undone pile of yarn on the ground, which has stayed there for the last five days or so, not that it usually _doesn’t_ stay there but he decides there’s no point in not doing anything with it, and so he starts mindlessly putting it back into a ball, his fingers working at it quickly by now

 

( _it might be mindless work but it does help with getting into the right mindset properly_ )

 

a red one first, a white second, and he’s halfway through the pale green third one when the door opens. He doesn’t move though, knowing she’ll come to him shortly, and oh but doesn’t he want her to be quick — he needs to feel her hands on him, he needs to smell that lavender perfume she always puts on her neck, he needs her fingertips carding through his hair, he _needs_ all of it and he wants all of it and so he should let her know so she doesn’t waste too much time with the food, and so maybe in another moment he would think that the sound that just left his throat might have been the pitiful kind of mewling, but it does seem to work because he hears cupboards closing and bare feet coming closercloser _closer_ on the ground until she’s right next to him, kneeling down.

“Someone has no patience around here, huh,” she says, but she sounds more amused than like she means it, which is good, but it’s also true — he really isn’t feeling too patient right now.

She makes to sit and see the neatly put back together balls of yarn on the opposite side of the pillows.

“But look at it,” she says, grabbing one and turning it over as she finally, _finally_ starts petting his hair again. He purrs, letting her know that it was exactly what he wanted — she turns the yarn over before placing it on the windowsill.

“Hm,” she whispers, moving a few strands of hair from his forehead as he nuzzles into it at once, “look at you. Awful pretty _and_ clever, too.” She’s smiling as she says it, wholly meaning it

 

( _he faintly recalls that someone once told him that he was dull, that he was the stupidest of them all, that he couldn’t do a single thing without anyone else telling him better, but it doesn’t matter right now because he knows it’s wrong and that’s not how B — how his mistress calls him and he knows_ she _is right at the end of it_ )

 

as she runs her fingers through his hair and at the back of his neck, and yesyes _yes_ that was exactly what he had wanted, but it’s not quite enough, so he forces himself on his knees even if lying down had felt warm and nice and safe but his mistress is warmer _and_ nicer _and_ safer than a bunch of pillows could ever be, his head nuzzling against her shoulder. She laughs a bit, but she doesn’t push him away — she brings a hand to the back of his head, her fingers tangling into his long hair slowly, gently, stroking it and smoothing it down.

“Let me guess,” she says, her chest moving with it, and oh but it’s so much easier to take notice of these details like _this_ — her breathing, her heartbeat, her warmth, her voice — when there’s nothing else in the world that matters quite as much right now, because it’s everything there is at least for the next few hours. “You want more, don’t you.” It’s not a question. He licks her collarbone quickly once, twice, thrice, knowing that he can do it and she won’t say no and that there’s nothing wrong with it —

“There,” she goes on, “this isn’t exactly the right place now, is it. Come on, we get to the sofa, you can have as much as you like. I have that dark chocolate you like, too.”

He pretends to scowl

 

( _but he knows she’d rather have the sofa since that one time they did disrupt the pillows and ended up crashing on the ground_ )

 

but when she stands and heads for the sofa he slips off the pillows, crawling after her, and oh but she really has it, a few dark handful of pralines at her side. She slips one inside his mouth as soon as he moves closer, his lips parted, and he swallows just after letting it rest in his mouth for a bit, tasting it, and then he climbs on the sofa and into his mistress’ open, waiting arms, and of course she’s exactly as warm and nicer and safer than anyone else or anywhere else, and then her hands are all over his hair and his back just the way he likes it, and the more he snuggles against her shoulder the better it feels, and she only sounds delighted as she asks whether he likes it.

He’s curled on her lap now, and the louder he mewls to show her exactly how much he likes it the more she gives back — she drops a few kisses on the sides of his head as she pets him, she scratches at the back of his neck and over his ears and just over his shoulders, and oh but he loves how her short, blunt nails feel against his skin, he loves how gentle her tone is when she drops praises into the shell of his ear, he loves how she might _look_ hard and sturdy and angular but then when push comes to shove every single part of her is warm and strong but soft enough at the same time, he loves how by now he doesn’t even need to ask outright for much of anything because she already knows what he wants, and no one else quite ever knew to _that_ level, did they, and he could do this for hours, maybe he _will_ do this for hours unless he wants a break and he knows that he’s not going to be denied coming back if it’s the case, but he doesn’t want to now, he really _doesn’t_ , and so he just pays attention to _her_ and how she touches him and how her fingers brush the spot where collar meets skin before she kisses his forehead again and feeds him another praline.

He swallows, that trace of sweetness exploding over his tongue, then pushes her back slightly at the back of the sofa, and knowing that she could resist it or push him away at any moment but she _doesn’t_ and she _wouldn’t_ makes him feel warm all over

 

( _she’s not_ her _, she’s not going to just cast you out when she doesn’t need you anymore_ )

 

and he knows that she’ll let him pretend he _can_ keep her there, and now maybe his heartbeat has sped up a bit, but not for the reasons it used to that he can’t really recall right now, they seem so unimportant and left in the past, why should he care, and she’s smiling up at him very, very sweetly, and it makes her eyes brighten even more, and suddenly he wants her to _know_ but he can’t tell her directly now, not when he’s not supposed to, not when he doesn’t even think he could speak if he wanted because he’s moving fast into that moment where there’s literally nothing that matters except _her_ and her hands and her body and her touch, but he has the next best thing and he knows she knows, and so he lets his lips curl into a small smile before he stares down at her, intently, very much, and then he blinks on purpose, slow, deliberate.

He does it once, twice, thrice, and then keeps his eyes open again, gauging the reaction, and for a moment she seems fairly surprised, but then —

Oh.

Then she blinks back, twice, her full lips curling up in that lovely smile she has just for him and no one else, and she kisses both of his cheeks, her pretty blue eyes showing that she is moved by what he just did somehow, and he doesn’t get why because it’s nothing she hadn’t known already —

“You’re —” She starts, shaking her head, her hands cupping his face, and oh, they feel so good, they’re large and warm and they’re perfect against his skin, they seem made for fitting against his cheekbones, or maybe he feels made for them —, “you really like to leave me damn speechless at any time, don’t you,” she says, but it’s obvious she doesn’t expect an answer as she runs her thumbs over his skin before letting her hands fall from his face and go back to his neck and his hair, the touch light but firm, and now everything that’s not her face and her eyes feels slightly blurred at the edges and he feels maybe a bit lightheaded, but it’s the good kind of and he knows she’s not going to leave or move or let him deal with it on his own —

“Me, too,” she smiles, sitting a bit straighter but not moving, and _oh_ , she understood but of course, she always understands, she _always_ does, and then she nods down at him and of course she knows, and maybe he’s grinning as he slowly leans down and lets his head fall on her bent legs, where he can look up at her as she cards her fingers through his hair again and again, and right now he can just think that he loves her and everything about her and that the whole of her just feels like they were made to fit together and that she’s looking down at him like she doesn’t want to be anywhere else and —

Months ago, when they started, he’d have maybe thought, _she’s just saying it to make me feel better_ as he heard her whisper, “And I couldn’t ask for anyone better.”

Now, _now_ as she says it again, sweet and firm and meaning it —

Later, when they will talk about it as they always do, maybe he’ll come to terms with the fact that it’s entirely fair that if _she_ is the best person he could have asked for, then the reverse is valid.

But right in _this_ moment, it feels wholly, completely true, and he doesn’t doubt it for one second.

 

 

End.


End file.
